I am working on a project to replicate an application that currently runs on premises to an Azure SQL Database. For the foreseeable future, the application will have to run both on site and on Azure. The project is stored in TFS, and multiple filegroups are specified. Development is ongoing. Is there a way I can maintain this as one project in source control, given that Azure SQL databases only have a primary filegroup? I feel like I can't be the first person in this situation, but I haven't found a decent solution yet.
I'm fine with the Azure database only running on primary, but that is not an option for the local database. This is not for a single deployment, I would like to continue to deploy changes both locally and to Azure from source control. I may be asking for too much here, I just really really want to avoid dual maintenance, when there are a number of teams involved.
Thank you!
You have two options:
Add manual SQL Statements to setup Filegroups on your on-premises SQL Server that don't run against SQL Azure
Use a new feature of Azure named SQL Managed Instances. This is fully managed SQL Server instance running in Azure that supports all features of SQL Server such as filegroups. Don't go installing your own SQL Server on IaaS. That's not necessary anymore with this new feature.
There is no way to use multiple filegroups in Azure SQL Database. If you want to move your database to the cloud and keep the ability to use multiple filegroups, please consider setting an Azure VM with SQL Server on it. Another option would be to change your application so that it does not use SQL filegroups.
As for the replication, please consider SQL Server replication or Azure Data Sync. Azure Data Sync requires an Azure SQL database. It is slower than SQL Server replication but it can handle conflicts.
One of the clients I'm working with is requesting that I encrypt my database. The problem is, none of my other clients need or care about this.
I am wondering two things:
How costly (performance) is it to encrypt my entire database? I.e. how much slower will my read / writes be?
Is there anyway I can provision a small separate DB, or segment my current DB on Heroku and host that one specific client's data (wherein their data is fully encrypted).
Thanks!
Ringo
I have ASP.NET mvc2 web application already running in two machines and connected with sql server. My database is 200mb at max. I want to migrate my web application to use mvc4 and EF and I also want to use some in memory database by droping sql server.
I checked on internet and i can migrate my application to mvc4 and EF but I could not find help about which in memomry databse i can use with EF/Codefirst. Also how can I backup inmemory database to some web based storage as Amazon S3 or Azure storage?
First of all, why do you want to use an in memory database? Sql databses have great reliability and querying capabilities.
When using two servers, an in memory database isn't going to work since the memory will be local to each server. You can use a distributed cache or something to make this work.
The Entity Framework isn't suited for this scenario. It is an object relational database mapper. It makes no sense to use this with an in memory database. An ORM translates objects to a relational store (like a database). In memory you only deal with objects so you don't need an ORM.
If your database is only 200mb you will not have any performance problems. A database is optimized for your scenario and an ORM like the Entity Framework will speed up your development time.
I've got legacy data in a SQL Server 2008 db. Since rails support for SQL Server is a little complicated, I'd like to move that data to MySQL. I've installed rails-sqlserver, so I can access the data from the old database.
Is there a way I can read the data from the SQL Server db but then save it to the MySQL db that is running the app?
Thanks
If you just need to move the data as a one off I'd export your data out of SQL Server as csv files providing your data isn't too complex.
I would manually create your MySQL tables so you can choose your data types as the options differ from those in SQL Server.
You could then import your csv files.
UPDATED 2010-11-25
A legacy stand-alone application (A1) is being re-created as a web application (A2).
A1 is written in Delphi 7 and uses a MS Access database to store the data. A1 has been distributed to ~1000 active users that we have no control over during the build of A2.
The database has ~50 tables, some which contain user data, some which contain template data (which does not need to be copied); 3-4 of these user tables are larger (<5000 records), the rest is small (<100).
Once A2 is 'live', users of A1 should be able to migrate to A2. I'm looking for a comparison of scenario's to do so.
One option is to develop a stand-alone 'update' tool for these users, and have this update tool talk to the A2 database through webservices.
Another option is to allow users to upload their Access db (~15 MB) database to our server, run some kind of SSIS package (overnight, perhaps) to get this into A2 for that user, and delete the Access db afterward.
Am I missing options? Which option is 'best' (I understand this may be somewhat subjective, but hopefully the pro's and cons for the scenario's can at least be made clear).
I'll gladly make this a community wiki if so demanded.
UPDATE 2010-11-23: it has been suggested that a variant of scenario 1 would be to have the update tool/application talk directly to the production database. Is this feasible?
UPDATE 2011-11: By now, this has been taken into production. Users upload the .zip file the .mdb is in, which is unpacked and placed in a secure location. A nightly SSIS scheduled job comes along and moves the data to staging tables, which are then moved into production through SP's.
I would lean toward uploading the complete database and running the conversion on the server.
In either case you need to write a conversion program. The real questions is how much of the conversion you deploy and run on the customers' computers. I would keep that part as simple as possible, i.e. just the upload. That way if you find any bugs or unexpected data during the conversion you can simply update the server and not need to re-deploy your conversion program.
The total amount of data you are talking about is not too large to upload, and it sounds like the majority of it would need to be uploaded in any case.
If you install a conversion program locally it would need a way to recover from a conversion that stopped part way through. That can be a lot more complicated than simply restarting an upload of the access database.
Also you don't indicate there would be any need for the web services after the conversions are done. The effort to put those services together, and keep them running and secure during the conversions would be far more than a simple upload application or web form.
Another factor is how quickly your customers would convert. If some of them will run the current application for some time period you may need to update your conversion application as the server database changes over time. If you upload the database and run the conversion on the server then only the server conversion program would need to be updated. There would not be any risk of a customer downloading the conversion program but not running it until after the server databases were updated.
We have a similar case where we choose to run the conversion on the server. We built a web page for the user to upload their files. In that case there is nothing to deploy for the new application. The only downside we found is getting the user to select the correct file. If you use a web form for the upload you can't pre-select file name for the user because of security restrictions. In our case we knew where the file was located but the customers did not. We provide directions on the upload page for the users to help them out. You could avoid this by writing a small desktop application to perform the upload for the users.
The only downside I see to writing a server based conversion is some of your template data will be uploaded that is un-needed. That is a small amount of data anyway.
Server Pros:
- No need to re-deploy the conversion due to bugs, unexpected data, or changes to the server database
- Easier to secure (possibly), there is only one access point - the upload. Of course you are accepting customer data in the form of an access database so you still can't trust anything in it.
Server Cons:
- Upload un-needed template data
Desktop Pros:
- ? I'm having trouble coming up with any
Desktop Cons:
- May need multiple versions deployed
As to talking to a server database directly. I have one application that talks to a hosted database directly to avoid creating web services. It works OK, but if given the chance I would not take that route again. The internet is dropped on a regular basis and the SQL Providers do not recover very well. We have trained our clients just to try again when that happens. We did this to avoid creating web services for our desktop application. We just reference the IP address in the server connection string. There is an entire list of security reasons not to take this route - we were comfortable with our security setup and possible risks. In the end the trade off of using the desktop application with no modifications was not worth having an unstable product.
Since a new database server to be likely one the standard database engines in the industry, why not consider linking the access application to this database server? That way you can simply send your data up to sql server that way.
I'm not really sure why you'd consider even suggest using a set of web services to a database engine when access supports an ODBC link to that database engine. So one potential upgrade path would be to simply issue a new application in access that has to be placed in the same directory as to where their current existing data file (and application) is now. Then on startup this application can simply RE link all of its tables to your existing database, plus come with a pre link set of tables to the database server. This is going to be far less work in building up some type of web services approach. I suppose part of this centers around where the database servers going to be hosted, but in most cases perhaps during the migration period, you have the database server running somewhere where everyone can get access to it. And a good many web providers allow external links to their database now.
It's also not clear that on the database server system you're going to create separate databases for each one, or as you suggest in your title it's all going to be placed into one database. Since is going to be placed into one database, then during the upsizing, an additional column that identifies the user location or however you plan to distinguish each database will be added during this upsizing process to distinguish each user set of data.
How easy this type of migration be will depend on the schema and database layout that the developers are using for the new system. Hopefully and obviously it has provisions for each user or location or however you plan to distinguish each individual user of the system. So, I don't suggest web services, but do suggest linking tables from the Access application to the instance of SQL server (or whatever server you run).
How best to do this will depend on the referential integrity and business rules that must be enforced, if there are any. For example, is there the possibility of duplicates when the databases are merged? I gather they are being merged from your somewhat cryptic statement: "And yes, one database for all, aspnet membership for user id's".
If you have no control of the 1000+ users of A1, how are you going to get them all to convert to A2?
Have you considered giving them an SQL Server Express DB to upgrade to, and letting them host the Web App on their own servers?