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  • LLBLGen: Copy table from one database to another

    - by StreamT
    I have two databases (SQL Server 2005) with the same table schemes. I need to copy data from source table to destination with some modification of data along the way. And if destination table already contains some data, then rows from source table should not override, but be added to the destination table. In our project we use LLBLGen and LINQ to LLBLGen to as ORM solution. Example: Table 1: Table 2: Table 1: Key Value Key Value Key Value 1 One 1 T2_One Result=> 1 One 2 Two 2 T2_Two 2 Two 3 Three 3 Three 4 T2_One 5 T2_Two

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  • Prepare and import data into existing database

    - by Álvaro G. Vicario
    I maintain a PHP application with SQL Server backend. The DB structure is roughly this: lot === lot_id (pk, identify) lot_code building ======== buildin_id (pk, identity) lot_id (fk) inspection ========== inspection_id (pk, identify) building_id (fk) date inspector result The database already has lots and buildings and I need to import some inspections. Key points are: It's a one-time initial load. Data comes in an Excel file. The Excel data is unaware of DB autogenerated IDs: inspections must be linked to buildings through their lot_code What are my options to do such data load? date inspector result lot_code ========== =========== ======== ======== 31/12/2009 John Smith Pass 987654X 28/02/2010 Bill Jones Fail 123456B

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  • add Constraint on database with trigger

    - by Am1rr3zA
    Hi, I have 3 tables (Student, Course, student_course_choose(have field grade)) I defined a view on these 3 tables that get me an Average of the each student. I want to have constraint(with trigger) on these view(or on the table that need it) to limit the average of each student between 13 and 18. I somewhere read that I must use foreach statement(instead of foreach row) on trigger because when I decrease some grade of special student and his/her average become less than 13 they don't give me error (because later I increase grade of another his/her course ). how must I wrote this Trigger? (I want to implement aprh for testing trigger) note:I can write it in SQL server, oracle or Mysql no diff for me.

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  • Make a usable Join relationship with LINQ on top of a database CSV design error

    - by jdk
    I'm looking for a way to fix and/or abstract away a comma-separated values (CSV) list in a database field in order to reconstruct a usable relationship such that I can properly join the two tables below and query them using LINQ and its Join method. Following is a sample showing the Person table and CsvArticleIds field having a CSV value to represent a one-to-many association with Article records. TABLE [dbo].[Person] Id Name CsvArticleIds -- ---------- -------- 1 Joe "15,22" 5 Ed "22" 10 Arnie "8,15,22" ^^^(Of course a link table should have been created; nonetheless the relationship with articles is trapped inside that list of CSV values.) TABLE [dbo].[Article] Id Title -- ---------- 8 Beginning C# 15 A Historic look at Programming in the 90s 22 Gardening in January Additional Info the fix can be at any level: C#.NET or SQL Server something easy because I will be repeating the solution for many other CSV values in other tables. Elegant is nice too. not looking for efficiency because this is part of a one-time data migration task and can take as long as it wants to run.

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  • Auto-generated values for columns in database

    - by Jamal
    Is it a good practice to initialize columns that we can know their values in database, for example identity columns of type unique identifier can have a default value (NEWID()), or columns that shows the record create date can have a default value (GETDATE()). Should I go through all my tables and do this whereever I am sure that I won't need to assign the value manually and the Auto-generated value is correct. I am also thinking about using linq-to-sql classes and setting the "Auto Generated Value" property of these columns to true. Maybe this is what everybody already knows or maybe I am asking a question about a fundamental issue, if so please tell me.

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  • c# reading integer fields from database

    - by arnoldino
    what is wrong with this code? try { if (cmd == null) getConnection(); cmd.CommandText = "Select id from HMonthInventary where machine_id=37"; SQLiteDataReader reader = cmd.ExecuteReader(); if (reader.HasRows==true) { reader.Read(); string s = reader[0].ToString(); // return first element reader.Close(); return s; } reader.Close(); return null; } catch (Exception e) { MessageBox.Show("Caught exception: " + e.Message+"|"+cmd.CommandText); return null; } I checked the sql statement, it turns the right value. why can't I read it? the returnvalue is "".

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  • Copy Data from One SQL Server Table to Other in Same Database Without Specifying Columns

    - by Scott
    In SQL Server there is the ability to INSERT all of the data from one table into another using the following statement: INSERT INTO TABLE1 SELECT * FROM TABLE2 When running this on a table with an identity column, even though we have run the command SET IDENTITY_INSERT TABLE1 ON, we get the error: An explicit value for the identity column in table can only be specified when a column list is used and IDENTITY_INSERT is ON This implies that we would have to list off all of the columns within the INSERT in order for this to work properly. In the situation that we are in, we do not have access to the column names, only the list of the tables we need to copy over. Is there any way to get around this limitation?

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  • Database Engine not appearing in SQL Server listing

    - by Jonn
    I don't know if I'm searching for the wrong queries in google but I can't seem to find an answer to this. I have SQL Server 2008 installed in my pc and according to services.msc, I've got 2 database engines running: SQLEXPRESS (probably one that came along with Visual Studio) and MSSQLSERVER. When I try to connect only SQLEXPRESS is visible in the Server Name drop down list. I tried to explicitly state MSSQLSERVER by typing in MYPCNAME\MSSQLSERVER Didn't work. The best solution I could find in the internet was to enable stuff at Configuration Manager. Didn't work either (although I did find that TCP/VIA and all other options were disabled for MSSQLSERVER). Anyone have any other ideas on what I should try next or probably something that I overlooked?

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  • SQL Server Express: Failed to add primary key after creating a database table

    - by Syd
    Scenario: I have created a database table. And when I tried to add a primary key (using the SQL Server Management Studiio) to the table, it failed with an error message "Saving changes is not permitted. The changes you have made requrie the following tables to be dropped and re-created. You have either made changes to a table that can't be recreated or enabled the option Prevent savign changes that require the table to be re-created." The environment is Windows 7. I have earlier installed it on a Windows XP SP2 and it worked. And yes, my table is empty (freshly created). My current workaround is to run the "Drop and Create" script. The other alternative is to create the primary key before I save the table. Is this a bug or a limitation with the Express version?

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  • Sql-server Database query help

    - by menacheb
    Hi, I have a problem that I didn't manage to solve for a very long time, and I quite desperate. I have a Database (SQL Server) with table named 'ProcessData' and columns named 'Process_Name' (Data Type: nvarchar(50)), 'Start_At' (DataType: DateTime) and 'End_At' (Data Type: DateTime). I need to know for each 'Time-Interval' (let's say 1 minute) how many processes (Process_Name = PN) was open (after or equal to the 'Start_at' column and before or equal to the 'End_At' column) during this time (It can be a few rows with the same data). Does anyone know how to make this query without a 'for' loop? (It ITSELF will promote the time), (The answer will be a table with two columns (1. The time the check took place. 2. the number of open processes at this time.) and a row for each 'Time-Interval' (1 minute in this example ) Many thanks,

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  • Optimize SQL connection?

    - by user1484035
    I am building a multi-page web project in HTML and Javascript that is constantly reading from AND writing to an SQL database. I can connect to the database and successfully run my project with this type of connection. var connection = new ActiveXObject("ADODB.Connection") ; var connectionstring="Data Source=<server>;Initial Catalog=<catalog>;User ID=<user>; Password=<password>;Provider=SQLOLEDB"; connection.Open(connectionstring); var rs = new ActiveXObject("ADODB.Recordset"); rs.Open("SELECT * FROM table", connection); rs.MoveFirst while(!rs.eof) { document.write(rs.fields(1)); rs.movenext; } rs.close; connection.close; Works great and runs fine. BUT, the first 5 lines (from var connection = to var rs =) causes the whole browser to freeze for a few seconds while it establishes the connection. I need to speed that up since I am constantly connecting to the database throughout my project. Is there a more effective way of connecting to a SQL database? or is my computer just bad and this should run faster?

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  • Database - Designing an "Events" Table

    - by Alix Axel
    After reading the tips from this great Nettuts+ article I've come up with a table schema that would separate highly volatile data from other tables subjected to heavy reads and at the same time lower the number of tables needed in the whole database schema, however I'm not sure if this is a good idea since it doesn't follow the rules of normalization and I would like to hear your advice, here is the general idea: I've four types of users modeled in a Class Table Inheritance structure, in the main "user" table I store data common to all the users (id, username, password, several flags, ...) along with some TIMESTAMP fields (date_created, date_updated, date_activated, date_lastLogin, ...). To quote the tip #16 from the Nettuts+ article mentioned above: Example 2: You have a “last_login” field in your table. It updates every time a user logs in to the website. But every update on a table causes the query cache for that table to be flushed. You can put that field into another table to keep updates to your users table to a minimum. Now it gets even trickier, I need to keep track of some user statistics like how many unique times a user profile was seen how many unique times a ad from a specific type of user was clicked how many unique times a post from a specific type of user was seen and so on... In my fully normalized database this adds up to about 8 to 10 additional tables, it's not a lot but I would like to keep things simple if I could, so I've come up with the following "events" table: |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | ID | TABLE | EVENT | DATE | IP | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 1 | user | login | 201004190030 | 127.0.0.1 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 1 | user | login | 201004190230 | 127.0.0.1 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 2 | user | created | 201004190031 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 2 | user | activated | 201004190234 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 2 | user | approved | 201004190930 | 217.0.0.1 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 2 | user | login | 201004191200 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 15 | user_ads | created | 201004191230 | 127.0.0.1 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 15 | user_ads | impressed | 201004191231 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 15 | user_ads | clicked | 201004191231 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 15 | user_ads | clicked | 201004191231 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 15 | user_ads | clicked | 201004191231 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 15 | user_ads | clicked | 201004191231 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 15 | user_ads | clicked | 201004191231 | 127.0.0.2 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 2 | user | blocked | 201004200319 | 217.0.0.1 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| | 2 | user | deleted | 201004200320 | 217.0.0.1 | |------|----------------|----------------|--------------|-----------| Basically the ID refers to the primary key (id) field in the TABLE table, I believe the rest should be pretty straightforward. One thing that I've come to like in this design is that I can keep track of all the user logins instead of just the last one, and thus generate some interesting metrics with that data. Due to the nature of the events table I also thought of making some optimizations, such as: #9: Since there is only a finite number of tables and a finite (and predetermined) number of events, the TABLE and EVENTS columns could be setup as ENUMs instead of VARCHARs to save some space. #14: Store IPs as UNSIGNED INT with INET_ATON() instead of VARCHARs. Store DATEs as TIMESTAMPs instead of DATETIMEs. Use the ARCHIVE (or the CSV?) engine instead of InnoDB / MyISAM. Overall, each event would only consume 14 bytes which is okay for my traffic I guess. Pros: Ability to store more detailed data (such as logins). No need to design (and code for) almost a dozen additional tables (dates and statistics). Reduces a few columns per table and keeps volatile data separated. Cons: Non-relational (still not as bad as EAV): SELECT * FROM events WHERE id = 2 AND table = 'user' ORDER BY date DESC(); 6 bytes overhead per event (ID, TABLE and EVENT). I'm more inclined to go with this approach since the pros seem to far outweigh the cons, but I'm still a little bit reluctant.. Am I missing something? What are your thoughts on this? Thanks!

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  • PowerShell: Read Excel to Create Inserts

    - by BuckWoody
    I’m writing a series of articles on how to migrate “departmental” data into SQL Server. I also hold workshops on the entire process – from discovering that the data exists to the modeling process and then how to design the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) process. Finally I write about (and teach) a few methods on actually moving the data. One of those options is to use PowerShell. There are a lot of ways even with that choice, but the one I show is to read two columns from the spreadsheet and output statements that would insert the data using a stored procedure. Of course, you could re-write this as INSERT statements, out to a text file for bcp, or even use a database connection in the script to move the data directly from Excel into SQL Server. This snippet won’t run on your system, of course – it assumes a Microsoft Office Excel 2007 spreadsheet located at c:\temp called VendorList.xlsx. It looks for a tab in that spreadsheet called Vendors. The statement that does the writing just uses one column: Vendor Code. Here’s the breakdown of what I’m doing: In the first block, I connect to Microsoft Office Excel. That connection string is specific to Excel 2007, so if you need a different version you’ll need to look that up. In the second block I set up a selection from the entire spreadsheet based on that tab. Note that if you’re only after certain data you shouldn’t get the whole spreadsheet – that’s just good practice. In the next block I create the text I want, inserting the Vendor Code field as I go. Finally I close the connection. Enjoy! $ExcelConnection= New-Object -com "ADODB.Connection" $ExcelFile="c:\temp\VendorList.xlsx" $ExcelConnection.Open("Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;` Data Source=$ExcelFile;Extended Properties=Excel 12.0;") $strQuery="Select * from [Vendors$]" $ExcelRecordSet=$ExcelConnection.Execute($strQuery) do { Write-Host "EXEC sp_InsertVendors '" $ExcelRecordSet.Fields.Item("Vendor Code").Value "'" $ExcelRecordSet.MoveNext()} Until ($ExcelRecordSet.EOF) $ExcelConnection.Close() Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • ???????????Java SE 7??????! ?Java SE 7 ?????? ?????? ???!

    - by rika.tokumichi
    2006?Java SE6???????5????????????????????Java SE 7???????????????????????????????????????????2011?7?7???Java SE 7 ?????? ?????????????? ???????????????????????Java SE 7????????????????????????????????????????????Java????????????????1??????????????????? ????????????????????????????????? ?????????????Java SE 7????????Java SE8?????????????????????Java??????????????????HotSpot???JRockit??????Java???????????????????????????? ?????????????Java SE 7???????????Project Coin??InvokeDynamic??NIO.2??JSR-166y????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????? Java SE 7 ??????????????????????????????Tips??????????????Java SE7????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????Ustream?????????????????????! ???? Java SE 7 ?????? ?????? ??:2011?7?7?14?~ ??:?????????? 13F S3?S4 ?????(??) (????) 14:00 - 14:20????? 14:20 - 15:10Java SE 7?8??? 15:15 - 16:05HotRockit?Java?????????? 16:05 - 16:20?? (????) 16:20 - 17:05NetBeans 7.0?Project Coin??? 17:05 - 17:50InvokeDynamic??? 17:50 - 18:05?? 18:05 - 18:35NIO.2??? 18:35 - 19:05JSR 166y??? 19:05 -??? * ????????????????????????? ??????????????? ????????????

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  • ???????????Java SE 7??????! ?Java SE 7 ?????? ?????? ???!

    - by rika.tokumichi
    2006?Java SE6???????5????????????????????Java SE 7???????????????????????????????????????????2011?7?7???Java SE 7 ?????? ?????????????? ???????????????????????Java SE 7????????????????????????????????????????????Java????????????????1??????????????????? ????????????????????????????????? ?????????????Java SE 7????????Java SE8?????????????????????Java??????????????????HotSpot???JRockit??????Java???????????????????????????? ?????????????Java SE 7???????????Project Coin??InvokeDynamic??NIO.2??JSR-166y????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????? Java SE 7 ??????????????????????????????Tips??????????????Java SE7????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????Ustream?????????????????????! ???? Java SE 7 ?????? ?????? ??:2011?7?7?14?~ ??:?????????? 13F S3?S4 ?????(??) (????) 14:00 - 14:20????? 14:20 - 15:10Java SE 7?8??? 15:15 - 16:05HotRockit?Java?????????? 16:05 - 16:20?? (????) 16:20 - 17:05NetBeans 7.0?Project Coin??? 17:05 - 17:50InvokeDynamic??? 17:50 - 18:05?? 18:05 - 18:35NIO.2??? 18:35 - 19:05JSR 166y??? 19:05 -??? * ????????????????????????? ??????????????? ????????????

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  • SQL Developer Data Modeler: On Notes, Comments, and Comments in RDBMS

    - by thatjeffsmith
    Ah the beautiful data model. They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words. And then we have our diagrams, how many words are they worth? Our friends from the Human Relations sample schema So our models describe how the data ‘works’ – whether that be at a logical-business level, or a technical-physical level. Developers like to say that their code is self-documenting. These would be very lazy or very bad (or both) developers. Models are the same way, you should document your models with comments and notes! I have 3 basic options: Comments Comments in RDBMS Notes So what’s the difference? Comments You’re describing the entity/table or attribute/column. This information will NOT be published in the database. It will only be available to the model, and hence, folks with access to the model. Table Comments (in the design only!) Comments in RDBMS You’re doing the same thing as above, but your words will be stored IN the data dictionary of the database. Oracle allows you to store comments on the table and column definitions. So your awesome documentation is going to be viewable to anyone with access to the database. RDBMS is an acronym for Relational Database Management System – of which Oracle is one of the first commercial examples If the DDL is produced and ran against a database, these comments WILL be stored in the data dictionary. Notes A place for you to add notes, maybe from a design meeting. Or maybe you’re using this as a to-do or requirements list. Basically it’s for anything that doesn’t literally describe the object at hand – that’s what the comments are for. I totally made these up. Now these are free text fields and you can put whatever you want here. Just make sure you put stuff here that’s worth reading. And it will live on…forever.

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  • MS SQL Server 2008 Developer Training Kit Released

    - by Aamir Hasan
    The SQL Server 2008 Developer Training Kit will help you understand how to build web applications which deeply exploit the rich data types, programming models and new development paradigms in SQL Server 2008.  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=E9C68E1B-1E0E-4299-B498-6AB3CA72A6D7&displaylang=en

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  • Ha a hutés nem elég a gépteremben: Sun Cooling Door a Database Machine-hoz

    - by Fekete Zoltán
    A Database Machine hatalmas teljesítménye miatt általában jóval kevesebb hutésre van szükség, mintha egy külön high-end servert és külön high-end storage-ot hutenénk! Ha viszont a géptermünk maradék hutési kapacitása nem elegendo, és nem elégszünk meg a "hagyományos mosóporral", akkor újabb hutési trükkre van szükség. Erre kínálnak megoldást a Sun Cooling Door modellek, például az 5200-as és az 5600-as modellek.

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  • The Data Scientist

    - by BuckWoody
    A new term - well, perhaps not that new - has come up and I’m actually very excited about it. The term is Data Scientist, and since it’s new, it’s fairly undefined. I’ll explain what I think it means, and why I’m excited about it. In general, I’ve found the term deals at its most basic with analyzing data. Of course, we all do that, and the term itself in that definition is redundant. There is no science that I know of that does not work with analyzing lots of data. But the term seems to refer to more than the common practices of looking at data visually, putting it in a spreadsheet or report, or even using simple coding to examine data sets. The term Data Scientist (as far as I can make out this early in it’s use) is someone who has a strong understanding of data sources, relevance (statistical and otherwise) and processing methods as well as front-end displays of large sets of complicated data. Some - but not all - Business Intelligence professionals have these skills. In other cases, senior developers, database architects or others fill these needs, but in my experience, many lack the strong mathematical skills needed to make these choices properly. I’ve divided the knowledge base for someone that would wear this title into three large segments. It remains to be seen if a given Data Scientist would be responsible for knowing all these areas or would specialize. There are pretty high requirements on the math side, specifically in graduate-degree level statistics, but in my experience a company will only have a few of these folks, so they are expected to know quite a bit in each of these areas. Persistence The first area is finding, cleaning and storing the data. In some cases, no cleaning is done prior to storage - it’s just identified and the cleansing is done in a later step. This area is where the professional would be able to tell if a particular data set should be stored in a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS), across a set of key/value pair storage (NoSQL) or in a file system like HDFS (part of the Hadoop landscape) or other methods. Or do you examine the stream of data without storing it in another system at all? This is an important decision - it’s a foundation choice that deals not only with a lot of expense of purchasing systems or even using Cloud Computing (PaaS, SaaS or IaaS) to source it, but also the skillsets and other resources needed to care and feed the system for a long time. The Data Scientist sets something into motion that will probably outlast his or her career at a company or organization. Often these choices are made by senior developers, database administrators or architects in a company. But sometimes each of these has a certain bias towards making a decision one way or another. The Data Scientist would examine these choices in light of the data itself, starting perhaps even before the business requirements are created. The business may not even be aware of all the strategic and tactical data sources that they have access to. Processing Once the decision is made to store the data, the next set of decisions are based around how to process the data. An RDBMS scales well to a certain level, and provides a high degree of ACID compliance as well as offering a well-known set-based language to work with this data. In other cases, scale should be spread among multiple nodes (as in the case of Hadoop landscapes or NoSQL offerings) or even across a Cloud provider like Windows Azure Table Storage. In fact, in many cases - most of the ones I’m dealing with lately - the data should be split among multiple types of processing environments. This is a newer idea. Many data professionals simply pick a methodology (RDBMS with Star Schemas, NoSQL, etc.) and put all data there, regardless of its shape, processing needs and so on. A Data Scientist is familiar not only with the various processing methods, but how they work, so that they can choose the right one for a given need. This is a huge time commitment, hence the need for a dedicated title like this one. Presentation This is where the need for a Data Scientist is most often already being filled, sometimes with more or less success. The latest Business Intelligence systems are quite good at allowing you to create amazing graphics - but it’s the data behind the graphics that are the most important component of truly effective displays. This is where the mathematics requirement of the Data Scientist title is the most unforgiving. In fact, someone without a good foundation in statistics is not a good candidate for creating reports. Even a basic level of statistics can be dangerous. Anyone who works in analyzing data will tell you that there are multiple errors possible when data just seems right - and basic statistics bears out that you’re on the right track - that are only solvable when you understanding why the statistical formula works the way it does. And there are lots of ways of presenting data. Sometimes all you need is a “yes” or “no” answer that can only come after heavy analysis work. In that case, a simple e-mail might be all the reporting you need. In others, complex relationships and multiple components require a deep understanding of the various graphical methods of presenting data. Knowing which kind of chart, color, graphic or shape conveys a particular datum best is essential knowledge for the Data Scientist. Why I’m excited I love this area of study. I like math, stats, and computing technologies, but it goes beyond that. I love what data can do - how it can help an organization. I’ve been fortunate enough in my professional career these past two decades to work with lots of folks who perform this role at companies from aerospace to medical firms, from manufacturing to retail. Interestingly, the size of the company really isn’t germane here. I worked with one very small bio-tech (cryogenics) company that worked deeply with analysis of complex interrelated data. So  watch this space. No, I’m not leaving Azure or distributed computing or Microsoft. In fact, I think I’m perfectly situated to investigate this role further. We have a huge set of tools, from RDBMS to Hadoop to allow me to explore. And I’m happy to share what I learn along the way.

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  • SQL Azure vs. SQL Server

    If youd like to know the differences between SQL Server and SQL Azure, check this white paper. This FAQ is also interesting. var addthis_pub="guybarrette";...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Towards Database Continuous Delivery – What Next after Continuous Integration? A Checklist

    - by Ben Rees
    .dbd-banner p{ font-size:0.75em; padding:0 0 10px; margin:0 } .dbd-banner p span{ color:#675C6D; } .dbd-banner p:last-child{ padding:0; } @media ALL and (max-width:640px){ .dbd-banner{ background:#f0f0f0; padding:5px; color:#333; margin-top: 5px; } } -- Database delivery patterns & practices STAGE 4 AUTOMATED DEPLOYMENT If you’ve been fortunate enough to get to the stage where you’ve implemented some sort of continuous integration process for your database updates, then hopefully you’re seeing the benefits of that investment – constant feedback on changes your devs are making, advanced warning of data loss (prior to the production release on Saturday night!), a nice suite of automated tests to check business logic, so you know it’s going to work when it goes live, and so on. But what next? What can you do to improve your delivery process further, moving towards a full continuous delivery process for your database? In this article I describe some of the issues you might need to tackle on the next stage of this journey, and how to plan to overcome those obstacles before they appear. Our Database Delivery Learning Program consists of four stages, really three – source controlling a database, running continuous integration processes, then how to set up automated deployment (the middle stage is split in two – basic and advanced continuous integration, making four stages in total). If you’ve managed to work through the first three of these stages – source control, basic, then advanced CI, then you should have a solid change management process set up where, every time one of your team checks in a change to your database (whether schema or static reference data), this change gets fully tested automatically by your CI server. But this is only part of the story. Great, we know that our updates work, that the upgrade process works, that the upgrade isn’t going to wipe our 4Tb of production data with a single DROP TABLE. But – how do you get this (fully tested) release live? Continuous delivery means being always ready to release your software at any point in time. There’s a significant gap between your latest version being tested, and it being easily releasable. Just a quick note on terminology – there’s a nice piece here from Atlassian on the difference between continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment. This piece also gives a nice description of the benefits of continuous delivery. These benefits have been summed up by Jez Humble at Thoughtworks as: “Continuous delivery is a set of principles and practices to reduce the cost, time, and risk of delivering incremental changes to users” There’s another really useful piece here on Simple-Talk about the need for continuous delivery and how it applies to the database written by Phil Factor – specifically the extra needs and complexities of implementing a full CD solution for the database (compared to just implementing CD for, say, a web app). So, hopefully you’re convinced of moving on the the next stage! The next step after CI is to get some sort of automated deployment (or “release management”) process set up. But what should I do next? What do I need to plan and think about for getting my automated database deployment process set up? Can’t I just install one of the many release management tools available and hey presto, I’m ready! If only it were that simple. Below I list some of the areas that it’s worth spending a little time on, where a little planning and prep could go a long way. It’s also worth pointing out, that this should really be an evolving process. Depending on your starting point of course, it can be a long journey from your current setup to a full continuous delivery pipeline. If you’ve got a CI mechanism in place, you’re certainly a long way down that path. Nevertheless, we’d recommend evolving your process incrementally. Pages 157 and 129-141 of the book on Continuous Delivery (by Jez Humble and Dave Farley) have some great guidance on building up a pipeline incrementally: http://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Delivery-Deployment-Automation-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321601912 For now, in this post, we’ll look at the following areas for your checklist: You and Your Team Environments The Deployment Process Rollback and Recovery Development Practices You and Your Team It’s a cliché in the DevOps community that “It’s not all about processes and tools, really it’s all about a culture”. As stated in this DevOps report from Puppet Labs: “DevOps processes and tooling contribute to high performance, but these practices alone aren’t enough to achieve organizational success. The most common barriers to DevOps adoption are cultural: lack of manager or team buy-in, or the value of DevOps isn’t understood outside of a specific group”. Like most clichés, there’s truth in there – if you want to set up a database continuous delivery process, you need to get your boss, your department, your company (if relevant) onside. Why? Because it’s an investment with the benefits coming way down the line. But the benefits are huge – for HP, in the book A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware, these are summarized as: -2008 to present: overall development costs reduced by 40% -Number of programs under development increased by 140% -Development costs per program down 78% -Firmware resources now driving innovation increased by a factor of 8 (from 5% working on new features to 40% But what does this mean? It means that, when moving to the next stage, to make that extra investment in automating your deployment process, it helps a lot if everyone is convinced that this is a good thing. That they understand the benefits of automated deployment and are willing to make the effort to transform to a new way of working. Incidentally, if you’re ever struggling to convince someone of the value I’d strongly recommend just buying them a copy of this book – a great read, and a very practical guide to how it can really work at a large org. I’ve spoken to many customers who have implemented database CI who describe their deployment process as “The point where automation breaks down. Up to that point, the CI process runs, untouched by human hand, but as soon as that’s finished we revert to manual.” This deployment process can involve, for example, a DBA manually comparing an environment (say, QA) to production, creating the upgrade scripts, reading through them, checking them against an Excel document emailed to him/her the night before, turning to page 29 in his/her notebook to double-check how replication is switched off and on for deployments, and so on and so on. Painful, error-prone and lengthy. But the point is, if this is something like your deployment process, telling your DBA “We’re changing everything you do and your toolset next week, to automate most of your role – that’s okay isn’t it?” isn’t likely to go down well. There’s some work here to bring him/her onside – to explain what you’re doing, why there will still be control of the deployment process and so on. Or of course, if you’re the DBA looking after this process, you have to do a similar job in reverse. You may have researched and worked out how you’d like to change your methodology to start automating your painful release process, but do the dev team know this? What if they have to start producing different artifacts for you? Will they be happy with this? Worth talking to them, to find out. As well as talking to your DBA/dev team, the other group to get involved before implementation is your manager. And possibly your manager’s manager too. As mentioned, unless there’s buy-in “from the top”, you’re going to hit problems when the implementation starts to get rocky (and what tool/process implementations don’t get rocky?!). You need to have support from someone senior in your organisation – someone you can turn to when you need help with a delayed implementation, lack of resources or lack of progress. Actions: Get your DBA involved (or whoever looks after live deployments) and discuss what you’re planning to do or, if you’re the DBA yourself, get the dev team up-to-speed with your plans, Get your boss involved too and make sure he/she is bought in to the investment. Environments Where are you going to deploy to? And really this question is – what environments do you want set up for your deployment pipeline? Assume everyone has “Production”, but do you have a QA environment? Dedicated development environments for each dev? Proper pre-production? I’ve seen every setup under the sun, and there is often a big difference between “What we want, to do continuous delivery properly” and “What we’re currently stuck with”. Some of these differences are: What we want What we’ve got Each developer with their own dedicated database environment A single shared “development” environment, used by everyone at once An Integration box used to test the integration of all check-ins via the CI process, along with a full suite of unit-tests running on that machine In fact if you have a CI process running, you’re likely to have some sort of integration server running (even if you don’t call it that!). Whether you have a full suite of unit tests running is a different question… Separate QA environment used explicitly for manual testing prior to release “We just test on the dev environments, or maybe pre-production” A proper pre-production (or “staging”) box that matches production as closely as possible Hopefully a pre-production box of some sort. But does it match production closely!? A production environment reproducible from source control A production box which has drifted significantly from anything in source control The big question is – how much time and effort are you going to invest in fixing these issues? In reality this just involves figuring out which new databases you’re going to create and where they’ll be hosted – VMs? Cloud-based? What about size/data issues – what data are you going to include on dev environments? Does it need to be masked to protect access to production data? And often the amount of work here really depends on whether you’re working on a new, greenfield project, or trying to update an existing, brownfield application. There’s a world if difference between starting from scratch with 4 or 5 clean environments (reproducible from source control of course!), and trying to re-purpose and tweak a set of existing databases, with all of their surrounding processes and quirks. But for a proper release management process, ideally you have: Dedicated development databases, An Integration server used for testing continuous integration and running unit tests. [NB: This is the point at which deployments are automatic, without human intervention. Each deployment after this point is a one-click (but human) action], QA – QA engineers use a one-click deployment process to automatically* deploy chosen releases to QA for testing, Pre-production. The environment you use to test the production release process, Production. * A note on the use of the word “automatic” – when carrying out automated deployments this does not mean that the deployment is happening without human intervention (i.e. that something is just deploying over and over again). It means that the process of carrying out the deployment is automatic in that it’s not a person manually running through a checklist or set of actions. The deployment still requires a single-click from a user. Actions: Get your environments set up and ready, Set access permissions appropriately, Make sure everyone understands what the environments will be used for (it’s not a “free-for-all” with all environments to be accessed, played with and changed by development). The Deployment Process As described earlier, most existing database deployment processes are pretty manual. The following is a description of a process we hear very often when we ask customers “How do your database changes get live? How does your manual process work?” Check pre-production matches production (use a schema compare tool, like SQL Compare). Sometimes done by taking a backup from production and restoring in to pre-prod, Again, use a schema compare tool to find the differences between the latest version of the database ready to go live (i.e. what the team have been developing). This generates a script, User (generally, the DBA), reviews the script. This often involves manually checking updates against a spreadsheet or similar, Run the script on pre-production, and check there are no errors (i.e. it upgrades pre-production to what you hoped), If all working, run the script on production.* * this assumes there’s no problem with production drifting away from pre-production in the interim time period (i.e. someone has hacked something in to the production box without going through the proper change management process). This difference could undermine the validity of your pre-production deployment test. Red Gate is currently working on a free tool to detect this problem – sign up here at www.sqllighthouse.com, if you’re interested in testing early versions. There are several variations on this process – some better, some much worse! How do you automate this? In particular, step 3 – surely you can’t automate a DBA checking through a script, that everything is in order!? The key point here is to plan what you want in your new deployment process. There are so many options. At one extreme, pure continuous deployment – whenever a dev checks something in to source control, the CI process runs (including extensive and thorough testing!), before the deployment process keys in and automatically deploys that change to the live box. Not for the faint hearted – and really not something we recommend. At the other extreme, you might be more comfortable with a semi-automated process – the pre-production/production matching process is automated (with an error thrown if these environments don’t match), followed by a manual intervention, allowing for script approval by the DBA. One he/she clicks “Okay, I’m happy for that to go live”, the latter stages automatically take the script through to live. And anything in between of course – and other variations. But we’d strongly recommended sitting down with a whiteboard and your team, and spending a couple of hours mapping out “What do we do now?”, “What do we actually want?”, “What will satisfy our needs for continuous delivery, but still maintaining some sort of continuous control over the process?” NB: Most of what we’re discussing here is about production deployments. It’s important to note that you will also need to map out a deployment process for earlier environments (for example QA). However, these are likely to be less onerous, and many customers opt for a much more automated process for these boxes. Actions: Sit down with your team and a whiteboard, and draw out the answers to the questions above for your production deployments – “What do we do now?”, “What do we actually want?”, “What will satisfy our needs for continuous delivery, but still maintaining some sort of continuous control over the process?” Repeat for earlier environments (QA and so on). Rollback and Recovery If only every deployment went according to plan! Unfortunately they don’t – and when things go wrong, you need a rollback or recovery plan for what you’re going to do in that situation. Once you move in to a more automated database deployment process, you’re far more likely to be deploying more frequently than before. No longer once every 6 months, maybe now once per week, or even daily. Hence the need for a quick rollback or recovery process becomes paramount, and should be planned for. NB: These are mainly scenarios for handling rollbacks after the transaction has been committed. If a failure is detected during the transaction, the whole transaction can just be rolled back, no problem. There are various options, which we’ll explore in subsequent articles, things like: Immediately restore from backup, Have a pre-tested rollback script (remembering that really this is a “roll-forward” script – there’s not really such a thing as a rollback script for a database!) Have fallback environments – for example, using a blue-green deployment pattern. Different options have pros and cons – some are easier to set up, some require more investment in infrastructure; and of course some work better than others (the key issue with using backups, is loss of the interim transaction data that has been added between the failed deployment and the restore). The best mechanism will be primarily dependent on how your application works and how much you need a cast-iron failsafe mechanism. Actions: Work out an appropriate rollback strategy based on how your application and business works, your appetite for investment and requirements for a completely failsafe process. Development Practices This is perhaps the more difficult area for people to tackle. The process by which you can deploy database updates is actually intrinsically linked with the patterns and practices used to develop that database and linked application. So you need to decide whether you want to implement some changes to the way your developers actually develop the database (particularly schema changes) to make the deployment process easier. A good example is the pattern “Branch by abstraction”. Explained nicely here, by Martin Fowler, this is a process that can be used to make significant database changes (e.g. splitting a table) in a step-wise manner so that you can always roll back, without data loss – by making incremental updates to the database backward compatible. Slides 103-108 of the following slidedeck, from Niek Bartholomeus explain the process: https://speakerdeck.com/niekbartho/orchestration-in-meatspace As these slides show, by making a significant schema change in multiple steps – where each step can be rolled back without any loss of new data – this affords the release team the opportunity to have zero-downtime deployments with considerably less stress (because if an increment goes wrong, they can roll back easily). There are plenty more great patterns that can be implemented – the book Refactoring Databases, by Scott Ambler and Pramod Sadalage is a great read, if this is a direction you want to go in: http://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Databases-Evolutionary-paperback-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321774515 But the question is – how much of this investment are you willing to make? How often are you making significant schema changes that would require these best practices? Again, there’s a difference here between migrating old projects and starting afresh – with the latter it’s much easier to instigate best practice from the start. Actions: For your business, work out how far down the path you want to go, amending your database development patterns to “best practice”. It’s a trade-off between implementing quality processes, and the necessity to do so (depending on how often you make complex changes). Socialise these changes with your development group. No-one likes having “best practice” changes imposed on them, so good to introduce these ideas and the rationale behind them early.   Summary The next stages of implementing a continuous delivery pipeline for your database changes (once you have CI up and running) require a little pre-planning, if you want to get the most out of the work, and for the implementation to go smoothly. We’ve covered some of the checklist of areas to consider – mainly in the areas of “Getting the team ready for the changes that are coming” and “Planning our your pipeline, environments, patterns and practices for development”, though there will be more detail, depending on where you’re coming from – and where you want to get to. This article is part of our database delivery patterns & practices series on Simple Talk. Find more articles for version control, automated testing, continuous integration & deployment.

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    - by Fekete Zoltán
    Letöltheto és megtekintheto, sot elolvasható :) a COMPLETE SUPPORT SERVICES FOR ORACLE EXADATA dokumentum, amely részletesen leírja, milyen trméktámogatási lehetoségeket lehet igénybe venni egy Database Machine megoldáshoz. Az Exadata termékcsalád elemei mind tranzakciós rendszerek mind adattárházak adatbázisának futtatásához és adatbázisok egy közös szerveren muködtetéséhez nyújtanak optimális, nagy teljesítményu platformot.

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