SSIS or TSQL for SQL/MySQL table comparrison - tsql

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.

Related

T-SQL - Insert set into multiple constrained tables on linked server

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.

Need to join oracle and sql server tables in oledb source without using linked server

My ssis package has an oledb source which joins oracle and sql server to get source data and loads it into sql server oledb destination. Earlier we were using linked server for this purpose but we cannot use linked server anymore.
So I am taking the data from sql server and want to return it to the in clause of the oracle query which i am keeping as sql command oledb source.
I tried parsing an object type variable from sql server and putting it into the in clause of oracle query in oledb source but i get error that oracle cannot have more than 1000 literals in the in statement. So basically I think I have to do something like this:
select * from oracle.db where id in (select id from sqlserver.db).
Since I cannot use linked server so i was thinking if I could have a temp table which can be used throughout the package.
I tried out another way of using merge join in ssis. but my source data set is really large and the merge join is returning fewer rows than expecetd. I am badly stuck at this point. I have tried a number if things nothung seems to be working.
Can someone please help. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
A couple of options to try.
Lookup:
My first instinct was a Lookup Task, but that might not be a great solution depending on the size of your data sets, since all of the records from both tables have to pulled over the wire and stored in memory on the SSIS server. But if you were able to pull off a Merge Join, then a Lookup should also work, but it might be slow.
Set an OLE DB Source to pull the Oracle data, without the WHERE clause.
Set a Lookup to pull the id column from your SQL Server table.
On the General tab of the Lookup, under Specify how to handle rows with no matching entries, select Redirect rows to no-match output.
The output of the Lookup will just be the Oracle rows that found a matching row in your SQL Server query.
Working Table on the Oracle server
If you have the option of creating a table in the Oracle database, you could create a Data Flow Task to pipe the results of your SQL Server query into a working table on the Oracle box. Then, in a subsequent Data Flow, just construct your Oracle query to use that working table as a filter.
Probably follow that up with an Execute SQL Task to truncate that working table.
Although this requires write access to Oracle, it has the advantage of off-loading the heavy lifting of the query to the database machine, and only pulling the rows you care about over the wire.

DB2 Tables Not Loading when run in Batch

I have been working on a reporting database in DB2 for a month or so, and I have it setup to a pretty decent degree of what I want. I am however noticing small inconsistencies that I have not been able to work out.
Less important, but still annoying:
1) Users claim it takes two login attempts to connect, first always fails, second is a success. (Is there a recommendation for what to check for this?)
More importantly:
2) Whenever I want to refresh the data (which will be nightly), I have a script that drops and then recreates all of the tables. There are 66 tables, each ranging from 10's of records to just under 100,000 records. The data is not massive and takes about 2 minutes to run all 66 tables.
The issue is that once it says it completed, there is usually at least 3-4 tables that did not load any data in them. So the table is deleted and then created, but is empty. The log shows that the command completed successfully and if I run them independently they populate just fine.
If it helps, 95% of the commands are just CAST functions.
While I am sure I am not doing it the recommended way, is there a reason why a number of my tables are not populating? Are the commands executing too fast? Should I lag the Create after the DROP?
(This is DB2 Express-C 11.1 on Windows 2012 R2, The source DB is remote)
Example of my SQL:
DROP TABLE TEST.TIMESHEET;
CREATE TABLE TEST.TIMESHEET AS (
SELECT NAME00, CAST(TIMESHEET_ID AS INTEGER(34))TIMESHEET_ID ....
.. (for 5-50 more columns)
FROM REMOTE_DB.TIMESHEET
)WITH DATA;
It is possible to configure DB2 to tolerate certain SQL errors in nested table expressions.
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSEPGG_11.5.0/com.ibm.data.fluidquery.doc/topics/iiyfqetnint.html
When the federated server encounters an allowable error, the server allows the error and continues processing the remainder of the query rather than returning an error for the entire query. The result set that the federated server returns can be a partial or an empty result.
However, I assume that your REMOTE_DB.TIMESHEET is simply a nickname, and not a view with nested table expressions, and so any errors when pulling data from the source should be surfaced by DB2. Taking a look at the db2diag.log is likely the way to go - you might even be hitting a Db2 issue.
It might be useful to change your script to TRUNCATE and INSERT into your local tables and see if that helps avoid the issue.
As you say you are maybe not doing things the most efficient way. You could consider using cache tables to take a periodic copy of your remote data https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSEPGG_11.5.0/com.ibm.data.fluidquery.doc/topics/iiyvfed_tuning_cachetbls.html

DB2 updated rows since last check

I want to periodically export data from db2 and load it in another database for analysis.
In order to do this, I would need to know which rows have been inserted/updated since the last time I've exported things from a given table.
A simple solution would probably be to add a timestamp to every table and use that as a reference, but I don't have such a TS at the moment, and I would like to avoid adding it if possible.
Is there any other solution for finding the rows which have been added/updated after a given time (or something else that would solve my issue)?
There is an easy option for a timestamp in Db2 (for LUW) called
ROW CHANGE TIMESTAMP
This is managed by Db2 and could be defined as HIDDEN so existing SELECT * FROM queries will not retrieve the new row which would cause extra costs.
Check out the Db2 CREATE TABLE documentation
This functionality was originally added for optimistic locking but can be used for such situations as well.
There is a similar concept for Db2 z/OS - you have to check that out as I have not tried this one.
Of cause there are other ways to solve it like Replication etc.
That is not possible if you do not have a timestamp column. With a timestamp, you can know which are new or modified rows.
You can also use the TimeTravel feature, in order to get the new values, but that implies a timestamp column.
Another option, is to put the tables in append mode, and then get the rows after a given one. However, this option is not sure after a reorg, and affects the performance and space utilisation.
One possible option is to use SQL replication, but that needs extra tables for staging.
Finally, another option is to read the logs, with the db2ReadLog API, but that implies a development. Also, just appliying the archived logs into the new database is possible, however the database will remain in roll forward pending.

Data Warehousing Postgres

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?