So, I have a data set on server "A" and two tables ("t1", "t2") on linked server "B".
I cannot modify server "B" schema.
What I am trying to achieve is: insert first two data set (non-identity) columns into [B].[t1] which should generate identity index value, and then add second two, also non-identity, columns into [B].[t2], which contains column MsgId that should map to corresponding row in [B].[t2].
A visual version of how it works
It seems that I cannot use OUTPUT nor SCOPE_IDENTITY() on a linked server (both return nothing).
My question is so: Is there a way to add data from server A to server B without modifying latter?
My current solution involves cursors and creating a stored procedure on a remote server, but I feel like I am doing it completely wrong and reinventing wheel in the process. Also, modifying database structure is a painful process involving lots of paperwork.
What you want to do is ETL (Extract, transform, load) and using a tool like SSIS helps to do that much cleaner and more maintainable.
Related
Not able to load multiple tables, getting error:
Exception in component tMysqlInput_1 (MYSQL_DynamicLoading)
java.sql.SQLException: Bad format for Timestamp 'GUINESS' in column 3
One table works fine. Basically after first iteration the second table trying to use the schema
of the first table. Please help, how to edit the component to make it
correct. Trying to load actor & country table from sakila DB mysql to
a another DB on the same server. Above image is for successful one table
dynamic loading.
you should not use tMysqlInput if output schemas differ. For this case there is no way around tJavaRow and custom code. I however cannot guess what happens in tMap, so you should provide some more details about what you want to achieve.
If all you need is to load data from one table to another without any transformations, you can do one of the following:
If your tables reside in 2 different databases on the same server, you can use a tMysqlRow and execute a query "INSERT INTO catalog.table SELECT * from catalog2.table2..". You can do some simple transformations in SQL if needed.
If your tables live in different servers, check the generic solution I suggested for a similar question here. It may need some tweaking depending on your use case, but the general idea is to replicate the functionality of INSERT INTO SELECT when the tables are not on the same server.
I am new to SSIS and am after some assistance in creating an SSIS package to do a specific task. My data is stored remotely within a MySQL Database and this is downloaded to a SQL Server 2014 Database. What I want to do is the following, create a package where I can enter 2 dates that can be compared against the create date/date modified per record on a number of tables to give me a snap shot and compare the MySQL Data to the SQL Data so that I can see if there are any rows that are missing from my local SQL Database or if any need to be updated. Some tables have no dates so I just want to see a record count on what is missing if anything between the 2. If this is better achieved through TSQL I am happy to hear about other suggestions or sites to look at where things have been done similar.
In relation to your query Tab :
"Hi Tab, What happens at the moment is our master data is stored in a MySQL Database, the data was then downloaded to a SQL Server Database as a one off. What happens at the moment is I have a SSIS package that uses the MAX ID which can be found on most of the tables to work out which records are new and just downloads them or updates them. What I want to do is run separate checks on the tables to make sure that during the download nothing has been missed and everything is within sync. In an ideal world I would like to pass in to a SSIS package or tsql stored procedure a date range, shall we say calender week, this would then check for any differences between the remote MySQL database tables and the local SQL tables. It does not currently have to do anything but identify issues, correcting them may come later or changes would need to be made to the existing sync package. Hope his makes more sense."
Thanks P
To do this, you need to implement a Type 1 Slowly Changing Dimension type data flow in SSIS. There are a number of ways to do this, including a built in transformation aptly called the Slowly Changing Dimension transformation. Whilst this is easy to set up, it is a pain to maintain and it runs horrendously slowly.
There are numerous ways to set this up using other transformations or even SQL merge statements which are detailed here: https://bennyaustin.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/alternatives-to-ssis-scd-wizard-component/
I would recommend that you use Lookup transformations as they perform better than the Slowly Changing Dimension transformation but offer better diagnostics and error handling than the better performing SQL merge statement.
Before you do this you will need to add a Checksum or Hashbytes column to your SQL data for ease of comparison with the incoming MySQL data.
In short, calculate some sort of repeatable checksum as the data is downloaded into your SQL Server, then use this in an SSIS Lookup, matching on the row key, to check for changes. Where the checksum value is different for the same row it needs updating and where there is no matching row key in your SQL Data you need to insert the new row.
I am just starting to use tsqlt inside redgate's sql test. I have to deal with quite large tables (large number of columns) in a legacy databases. What is the best practise to insert some fake data into such tables (the 'script as' insert statements are quite large) - hence they would make my 'arrange part' of the unit test literally unreadable. Can I factor out such code? Also is there a way to not only script the insert statement but also fill in some values automagically? Thanks.
I would agree with your comment that you don't need to fill out all of the columns in your insert statement.
tSQLt.FakeTable removes all non-null constraints from the columns, as well as computed columns and identity columns (although these last two can be reinstated using particular parameters to FakeTable).
Therefore, you only need to populate the columns which are relevant to your code under test, which is usually only a smaller subset of columns from the table(s).
I wrote about this in a bit more detail in this article which also contains a few other 'gotchas' you may want to know.
Additionally, I'd suggest that if you have a number of tests which all need the same table faked and data inserted, that you consider using a SetUp routine - this is a Stored procedure in the test class (schema) which is called SetUp, and is called by tSQLt before each test in that schema. They won't show in RedGate's SQL Test window as yet (I've suggested it as an improvement), but will still work. This can make it harder to see - but does modularise that code thus reducing identical, repeated code.
We're considering using SSIS to maintain a PostgreSql data warehouse. I've used it before between SQL Servers with no problems, but am having a lot of difficulty getting it to play nicely with Postgres. I’m using the evaluation version of the OLEDB PGNP data provider (http://www.postgresql.org/about/news.1004).
I wanted to start with something simple like UPSERT on the fact table (10k-15k rows are updated/inserted daily), but this is proving very difficult (not to mention I’ll want to use surrogate keys in the future).
I’ve attempted (Link) and (http://consultingblogs.emc.com/jamiethomson/archive/2006/09/12/SSIS_3A00_-Checking-if-a-row-exists-and-if-it-does_2C00_-has-it-changed.aspx) which are effectively the same (except I don’t really understand the union all at the end when I’m trying to upsert) But I run into the same problem with parameters when doing the update using a OLEDb command – which I tried to overcome using (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms141773.aspx) but that just doesn’t seem to work, I get a validation error –
The external columns for complent.... are out of sync with the datasource columns... external column “Param_2” needs to be removed from the external columns.
(this error is repeated for the first two parameters as well – never came across this using the sql connection as it supports named parameters)
Has anyone come across this?
AND:
The fact that this simple task is apparently so difficult to do in SSIS suggests I’m using the wrong tool for the job - is there a better (and still flexible) way of doing this? Or would another ETL package be better for use between two Postgres database? -Other options include any listed on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extract,_transform,_load#Open-source_ETL_frameworks). I could just go and write a load of SQL to do this for me, but I wanted a neat and easily maintainable solution.
I have used the Slowly Changing Dimension wizard for this with good success. It may give you what you are looking for especially with the Wizard
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms141715.aspx
The External Columns Out Of Sync: SSIS is Case Sensitive - I encountered this issue multiple times and it makes me want to pull my hair out.
This simple task is going to take some work either way. SSIS is by no means an enterprise class ETL product yet, but it does give you some quick and easy functionality, and is sufficient for most ETL work. I guess it is also about your level of comfort with it as well.
SCD is way too slow for what I want. I need to use set based sql.
It turned out that a lot of my problems were with bugs in the provider.
I opened a forum topic (http://www.pgoledb.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=49) and had a useful discussion with the moderator/support/developer person.
Also Postgres doesn't let you do cross db querys, so I solved the problem this way:
Data Source from Production DB to a temp Archive DB table
Run set based query between temp table and archive table
Truncate temp table
Note that the temp table is not atchally a temp table, but a copy of the archive table schema to temporarily stored data in.
Took a while, but I got there in the end.
This simple task is going to take some work either way. SSIS is by no means an enterprise class ETL product yet, but it does give you some quick and easy functionality, and is sufficient for most ETL work. I guess it is also about your level of comfort with it as well.
What enterprise ETL solution would you suggest?
What apps or tools do you use for data entry into your database? I'm trying to improve our existing (cumbersome) system that uses a php web based system for entering data one ... item ... at ... a ... time.
My current solution to this is to use a spreadsheet. It works well with text and numbers that are human readable, but not with foreign keys that are used to join with the other table's rows.
Imagine that I want a row of data to include what city someone lives in. The column holding this is id_city, which is keyed to the "city" table which has two columns: id (serial) and name (text).
I envision being able to extend the spreadsheet capabilities to include dropdown menu's for every row of the id_city column that would allow the user to select which city (displaying the text of the city names), but actually storing the city id chosen. This way, the spreadsheet would:
(1) show a great deal of data on each screen and
(2) could be exported as a csv file and thrown to our existing scripts that manually insert rows into the database.
I have been playing around with MS Excel and Access, as well as OpenOffice's suite, but have not found something that gives me the functionality I mention above.
Other items on my wish-list:
(1) dynamically fetch the name of cities that can be selected by the user.
(2) allow the user to push the data directly into the backend (not via external files/scripts.
(3) If any of the columns of the rows of data gets changed in the backend, the user could refresh the data on the screen to reflect any recent changes.
Do you know how I could improve the process of data entry? What tools do you use? I use PostgreSQL for the backend and have access to MS Office, OpenOffice, as well as web based solutions. I would love a solution that is flexible, powerful, and doesn't require much time to develop or deploy (I know, dream on...)
I know that pgAdmin3 has similar functionality, but from what I have seen, it is more of an administrative tool rather than something for users to use.
As j_random_hacker noted, I've used MS Access for years (since Access 97) to connect to an ODBC Data Source.
You can do this via linking to external tables: (in Access 2010:)
New -> Blank Database
External Data -> ODBC Database -> Link to Data Source
Machine Data Source -> New -> System Data Source -> Select Driver (Oracle, or whatever) -> Finish
Enter a new name for your DSN, the all of the connection parameters, then click OK
Select newly created DSN, hit ok.
You can do so much once Access sees your external table as a linked table, including sorting, filtering, etc. There's one caveat: as far as I can tell, ALL operations happen on the client side unless you're using a pass-through query. That's fine if you're looking at a table with 3000 records. With 2,000,000 records, that hurts. To be clear, all data in the table comes down to the workstation, for all tables being joined, and the join happens client-side, NOT server-side.
There are usually standalone tools for basic database management - e.g., for Oracle and MySQL a free tool called SQL Developer suffices for basic database data entry.
For more complex types (especially involving clobs) I can usually knock an application together in Java+SWT in a day if we already have the model and DAOs available on the Java side. Yeah, you have to put some effort in, but if it will be used regularly in the future then it is probably worth it.
In your case (well, the case where you have bulk imports of data) knocking up some Perl that reads from the CSV and does the city id lookup would be trivial to implement. Maybe a waste for a one-off thing? Depends on the amount of data to import.
I would be surprised if MS Access can't do what you're looking for -- this is basically the exact use case for it. Namely, quickly throwing together a nice UI for a simple CRUD DB application that a spreadsheet doesn't quite stretch to.
This is an answer, technically, but not a recommendation:
I've used Excel and SSIS for importing simple data entry files into MS SQL, but it's not adequate - there's very little ability to control the data, and SSIS is so very touchy, especially when working with Excel.
MS Access does not work well with some non-Microsoft databases. There is an open-source equivalent called Apache OpenOffice Base you may want to try.