I'm using DTS to import data from an Access database to SQL Server 2005. It seems that DTS imports Access queries as tables instead of views, which won't work for me. Is there any way around that?
You can choose to not include the saved queries. (at least you can when using the SSMA - I suggest you use this in place of DTS anyway…it tends to do a better job).
you can find it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2005/en/us/migration.aspx
It is not clear if you going to continue to use ms-access as the front end here or not?. If you plan to continue using access then you really don’t need to convert those saved queries (views) up to sql server anyway. Most of the saved queries in access will work as before (now with linked tables to sql server).
You only need change/fix those saved quires that run slow. In other words most queries can continue to be used and run as is. It is only the slow ones and especially the ones with aggregate functions (sums, totals etc that process many records, but produce few rows). This types of queries really benefit from being moved up to sql server as a view (you then link to that view from ms-access).
If your not keeping any part of ms-access, then I am afraid there no automated tool for those queries. In these cases I just do a cut + paste from ms-access right into the management studio view builder. Most queries require very little modifications.
Related
What is the best solution when I would like to use an Access front-end application with some linked table (via ODBC) from MSSQL Server?
The difficulty of this for me is that I have to use complex queries with many multiple joins (and functions called from queries).
It is very-very slow because of the joins between the two DB (and there is a lot of data in some tables, the 2 GB Access mdb limit is the reason of the MSSQL DB upgrade).
Pass-through query doesn't help because of the joined Access tables.
With OPENDATASOURCE('Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0'... it is still slow in SQL Server too. I tried ODBC linked view with WHERE clause from MSSQL, but it
seems as slow as the full table.
I have to move all of joined Access tables to the MSSQL DB and convert all queries to Pass-Through? Is there any other solution?
I have to move all of joined Access tables to the MSSQL DB
Yes, definitely.
and convert all queries to Pass-Through?
Not necessarily, only those that are still slow.
"Normal" INNER JOIN queries, using only linked tables from one server database, are handled by Access and the ODBC driver in a way that everything is processed on the server. They should be (more or less) as fast as when run on the server (or as Pass-Through query).
Only "complex" queries, especially involving multiple INNER and OUTER JOINs, won't work like that. You'll notice that they are still very slow when running on linked tables. These need to be changed to Pass-Through queries.
Edit: I just noticed
functions called from queries
You can't call VBA functions from PT queries, and they will again kill performance when called from Access queries running on linked MSSQL tables (because they have to be processed locally).
You'll need to learn to create views in MSSQL, probably also user defined functions and/or stored procedures.
In the long run, you'll find that views are actually easier to manage than PT queries.
Want to create a script to export Data and tables and views to a sql script.
I have SQL Server 2008 r2.
So far I've only been able to automatically generate an sqlscript for all tables and views. But the data wasn't included.
OR is there any easier way to export data, tables, views, from one SQL Server to my ISP's SQL server?
Regards
Tea
If for some reason a backup/restore won't work for you, SSMS' Generate Scripts tool includes an advanced scripting option to include data:
Here are some options to think over (prioritised in terms of what I would recommend):-
A simple backup and restore will be the easiest and quickest solution;
Using a data scripting tool (like Red-Gate's Data Compare) could solve your needs;
Use the database comparison as part of Visual Studio.
A SSIS package could be developed to pump data back and forth between the two instances; or
Write your own script using the SET IDENTITY INSERT ON / OFF command for the identity seeded tables
The easiest way to do this is to create a backup, copy the .bak file to the other server, and restore the backup there.
Like #jhewlett said that will be the best way to do it. to answer the question in the comment section. no it shouldn't be a problem. Just make sure that the SQL Server Versions are the same. Had a bit of an issue not to long ago where there were two pc's with different releases of the R2 installed and couldn't restore the backup. Other thing you can also do is to script the entire database with data, but this will not be recommended as it could take a long time to generate the script and for it to finish running on the other computer.
Or you can simply just stop the SQL server instance and copy the database away onto an external hard drive and re-attach it to the other server. just remember to start the instances after doing this step.
I use Navicat Premium for these kind of things in mysql. It generates sql from data, tables, views and anything else. It provides tools to copy or synchronize table from one database on different server or platforms as well. For example I use it so much to transfer my tables from MySQL to a SQLite database, So easy and fast. Otherwise I had to transfer it manually with so much trouble.
very good tool and required for any DB admin or programmer. It support MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL and SQLite.
To Generate a schema with data follow these steps.
Select database to generate a schema '>' right click '>' Tasks '>' Generate schema '>' click NEXT in popup window '>'
select DB object to generate schema and click NEXT '>'
Go to advance option and scroll down '>'
Find Type of data to script and select one option as you need. '>'
and then Next Next and finish it.
Enjoy it.
If you don't want to port all tables data (for example you need to port just some base data in special tables) scripting options is not useful for you. In this case you'll have two options. First is using some third parties tools such as Red-Gate and Second way is writing the script by yourself. I prefer Second option because except the expensive price of most of them i want to run just little script for little delete, update and inserting purpose. But the important problem is here: maybe the record count is too long to write scripts record by record. I Think the linked Server is good point to solve that. It's enough for describing Just Declare Linked Server as you see in Images and get new script in your source DB and write scripts with access to both source and destination DB. Attached image must be clear.
Create New Linked Server:
Write Destination SQL Server Address:
Fill Login Info:
Now you have Linked Server:
Write script and enjoy:
Hope this help.
I am developing an application in C# VS 2010 past 4 months. I used MS Access 2007 to store my nearly 20 tables successfully.
Today I realized that my data base cannot be handled consistently by MS Access 2007. Hence I decided to go for SQL Server 2008 R2 Express with Upsizing wizard and it worked really great!
However, when I tried to run various options of my already well developed application, It kept throwing error each time when a query is fired to SQL Server.
I understood that Many of the stuffs of SQL supported by MS Access are not supported by MS SQL Server
For example: query with date, for representing date format when we use '#', SQL Server 2008 won' t recognize it.
Also, for Bool value, MS Access stores it as True and False where as SQL Server uses 0.
These all queries worked perfect with Access 07
I am sure that there must be some method so that SQL Server can understand MS access queries.
Or will I have to edit my whole application?? It will be as good as digging a mine for earning gold..
I have changed all data access objects such as reader, adapter, command, connection to SQL data objects using System.Data.SqlClient.
So, It is not the problem.
Please help me asap.
Thank you.
You cannot force SQL Server to run the MS Access queries. These queries will need to be rewritten to use T-SQL instead of the query language that MS Access uses.
I feel your pain, I just had to rewrite a large MS Access application (over 1k queries) that needed to be recreated to be used in SQL Server.
There will be some queries that might be able to be ported over directly but as you noticed queries with date, and even some of the aggregate functions (First(), etc) are not used in SQL Server and those queries will need to be changed.
Here is a link with some info on converting Access to SQL
Converting Access Queries to SQL Server
You are right that, most of the time, you cannot just take the SQL of a query from Access and run it within SQL Server. It may work for very simple queries, but usually you need to tweak them.
There are a few steps I would take:
Extract your queries (which I presume are in your code), and re-create them in your Access database. Make sure they work there as normal Access queries.
(you can for instance simply add some code to your app to print all queries to files so you don't have to mess with parameters, then just copy/paste them in your Access DB).
The point is simply to have working queries within Access.
Use SSMA from Microsoft for helping you to move your queries to SQL Server. It does a good job of translating them into T-SQL.
You may still have to convert some troublesome queries by hand, but it shouldn't be that many and usually the conversion is not difficult.
Once converted to T-SQL, just re-inject these working queries into your code, or keep the complex queries in SQL Server as views (which it usually be faster as SQL Server will have already created its execution plan, rather than your application sending raw SQL that the server needs to analyse).
As you pointed out, there could be some issues if your fields use some features that don't cross-over to SQL Server properly.
Look at your tables in Access and do some cleanup before attempting to convert:
For booleans fields:
Make sure you set their default values to 0 or 1 (they should not be empty).
Required fields must be non-null:
Make sure that any fields that you have set as 'Required' does not contain any NULL values in its data.
Unique indexes cannot ignore Null:
Check that your indexes are not set to be both 'Unique' and 'Ignore null'.
All tables must have clean primary keys:
Make sure all your tables have a unique primary key that doesn't have Null values in their data.
I'm faced with needing access for reporting to some data that lives in Oracle and other data that lives in a SQL Server 2000 database. For various reasons these live on different sides of a firewall. Now we're looking at doing an export/import from sql server to oracle and I'd like some advice on the best way to go about it... The procedure will need to be fully automated and run nightly, so that excludes using the SQL developer tools. I also can't make a live link between databases from our (oracle) side as the firewall is in the way. The data needs to be transformed in the process from a star schema to a de-normalised table ready for reporting.
What I'm thinking about is writing a monster query for SQL Server (which I mostly have already) that will denormalise and read out the data from SQL Server into a flat file using the sql server equivalent of sqlplus as a scheduled task, dump into a Well Known Location, then on the oracle side have a cron job that copies down the file and loads it with sql loader and rebuilds indexes etc.
This is all doable, but very manual. Is there one or a combination of FOSS or standard oracle/SQL Server tools that could automate this for me? the Irreducible complexity is the query on one side and building indexes on the other, but I would love to not have to write the CSV dumping detail or the SQL loader script, just say dump this view out to CSV on one side, and on the other truncate and insert into this table from CSV and not worry about mapping column names and all other arcane sqlldr voodoo...
best practices? thoughts? comments?
edit: I have about 50+ columns all of varying types and lengths in my dataset, which is why I'd prefer to not have to write out how to generate and map each single column...
"The data needs to be transformed in the process from a star schema to a de-normalised table ready for reporting."
You are really looking for an ETL tool. If you have no money in the till, I suggest you check out the Open Source Talend and Pentaho offerings.
I am trying come up with a way to pull the tables out of an Access database, automate the creation of those same tables in a SQL 2008 DB, and move the data to the new tables. This process will happen on a regular basis and there may be different tables each time.
I would like to do this totally in SSIS.
C# SQL CLR objects are an option.
The main issue I have been running into is how to get the Access table's schema and then convert that to a SQL script that I can run via SSIS.
Any ideas?
TIA
J
SSIS cannot adapt to new tables at runtime. (You can change connections, move a source to a table with a different name, but the same schema) So, it's not really easy to do what I think you are saying: Upsize an arbitrary set of tables in an Access DB to SQL (mirroring their structure and data, naming, etc), so that I can then write some straight SQL to transform the data into another SQL database or the same part of the database.
You can access the SSIS object model from C# and build a package (or modify a template package) programmatically and then execute it. This might offer the best bang for your buck, but the SSIS object model is kind of deep. The SSIS Team blog have finally started putting up examples (a year after I had to figure a lot of this out for myself)
There is always the upsizing wizard, and I'm sure there are some third party tools.