Data virtualization with SQL Server DB using Marklogic - virtualization

I would like to use data from a SQL Server database in Marklogic without moving it physically. I have read about data virtualization in Marklogic but cannot get any example or documentation explaining how to go about it. Please point me to any reference that may help me.
I have already tried reading data using MLSAM. Is this the only way and is this virtualization?

MarkLogic introduced the concept of Views to allow data visualization tools to connect to MarkLogic through ODBC, executing SQL against MarkLogic. These views are fed from XML content within MarkLogic through range indexes. So, I think that is the other way around for what you are looking for. In general, MarkLogic will need data inside its own databases, to allow indexing it.
MLSAM can be a way to pull such data in, executing SQL statements from within XQuery against external sources (contrary to xdmp:sql, which runs against the Views inside MarkLogic). Tools like RecordLoader, XQsync, and XMLSh might be worth looking at as well. See
http://developer.marklogic.com/code
HTH!

Related

What's the fastest way to put RDF data (specifically DBPedia dumps) into Postgres?

I'm looking to put RDF data from DBPedia Turtle (.ttl) files into Postgres. I don't really care how the data is modelled in Postgres as long as it is a complete mapping (it would also be nice if there were sensible indexes), I just want to get the data in Postgres and then I can transform it with SQL from there.
I tried using this StackOverflow solution that leverages Python and sqlalchemy, but it seems to be much too slow (would take days if not more at the pace I observed on my machine).
I expected there might have been some kind of ODBC/JDBC-level tool for this type of connection. I did the same thing with Neo4j in less than an hour using a plugin Neo4j provides.
Thanks to anyone that can provide help.

Postgresql tuning to be used as DatawareHouse

I am assembling a Business Intelligence solution using the Pentaho software as a BI engine. Within this solution, I had to set up a requirements for a PostgreSQL database server.
The current situation is very easy, since no ETL process is being carried out for data extraction, so the PostgreSQL configuration has not changed it much, and it is practically as it is configured as "factory".
I would like to know what Postgres configuration parameters have to be touched and modified to optimize it as a Datawarehouse. I have seen a lot of documentation, but it is not clear to me at all, since one documentation says that such values have to be modified, and other documentation, other completely different values.
I would like to know just that, if there is a clearer and more precise documentation to optimize a postgres 9.6 to be used as a Pentaho DW.
Thank you very much

Mirror SAP internal data to an external system

We would like to mirror data which is inside SAP to an external database.
Up to now there is a script which exports the data every night.
The customer wants this to happen more often. It should happen every hour.
The export is quite big, and we search for a better way to mirror data which is inside SAP to an external database.
Based on the tag, I assume that your external database is a PostgreSQL database. In this case, I don't think you will really find a pure SAP, database independent solution.
The standard solution for this sort of replication is the SAP SLT Server. It supports taking data out of your SAP system to either a SAP target or a non-SAP target. Currently it supports the following non-SAP targets:
DB2
SAP MaxDB
Microsoft SQL Server
Oracle
Sybase ASE
As you can see, PostgreSQL is not included in there (yet). In conclusion, I see the following possibilities:
Use SLT in combination with some other external DB that is supported.
Use a third party replication tool like for example SymmetricDS.
Depending on your source database, you might be able to use some database specific tools (e.g. SAP HANA Smart Data Integration).
Write some custom code for doing it. In my opinion, you should try to build a sort of log table in this case, to record (using maybe triggers) which rows were inserted / updated / deleted since the last replication. IMO, this should be really a last resort, as database replication is a fairly common topic and you should not reinvent the wheel.

Data mining with postgres in production environment - is there a better way?

There is a web application which is running for a years and during its life time the application has gathered a lot of user data. Data is stored in relational DB (postgres). Not all of this data is needed to run application (to do the business). However form time to time business people ask me to provide reports of this data data. And this causes some problems:
sometimes these SQL queries are long running
quires are executed against production DB (not cool)
not so easy to deliver reports on weekly or monthly base
some parts of data is stored in way which is not suitable for such
querying (queries are inefficient)
My idea (note that I am a developer not the data mining specialist) how to improve this whole process of delivering reports is:
create separate DB which regularly is update with production data
optimize how data is stored
create a dashboard to present reports
Question: But is there a better way? Is there another DB which better fits for such data analysis? Or should I look into modern data mining tools?
Thanks!
Do you really do data mining (as in: classification, clustering, anomaly detection), or is "data mining" for you any reporting on the data? In the latter case, all the "modern data mining tools" will disappoint you, because they serve a different purpose.
Have you used the indexing functionality of Postgres well? Your scenario sounds as if selection and aggregation are most of the work, and SQL databases are excellent for this - if well designed.
For example, materialized views and triggers can be used to process data into a scheme more usable for your reporting.
There are a thousand ways to approach this issue but I think that the path of least resistance for you would be postgres replication. Check out this Postgres replication tutorial for a quick, proof-of-concept. (There are many hits when you Google for postgres replication and that link is just one of them.) Here is a link documenting streaming replication from the PostgreSQL site's wiki.
I am suggesting this because it meets all of your criteria and also stays withing the bounds of the technology you're familiar with. The only learning curve would be the replication part.
Replication solves your issue because it would create a second database which would effectively become your "read-only" db which would be updated via the replication process. You would keep the schema the same but your indexing could be altered and reports/dashboards customized. This is the database you would query. Your main database would be your transactional database which serves the users and the replicated database would serve the stakeholders.
This is a wide topic, so please do your diligence and research it. But it's also something that can work for you and can be quickly turned around.
If you really want try Data Mining with PostgreSQL there are some tools which can be used.
The very simple way is KNIME. It is easy to install. It has full featured Data Mining tools. You can access your data directly from database, process and save it back to database.
Hardcore way is MADLib. It installs Data Mining functions in Python and C directly in Postgres so you can mine with SQL queries.
Both projects are stable enough to try it.
For reporting, we use non-transactional (read only) database. We don't care about normalization. If I were you, I would use another database for reporting. I will desing the tables following OLAP principals, (star schema, snow flake), and use an ETL tool to dump the data periodically (may be weekly) to the read only database to start creating reports.
Reports are used for decision support, so they don't have to be in realtime, and usually don't have to be current. In other words it is acceptable to create report up to last week or last month.

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?