Search Results

Search found 30284 results on 1212 pages for 'database normalization'.

Page 27/1212 | < Previous Page | 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34  | Next Page >

  • What is the preferred way to update database schemas in multiple production environments

    - by rmarimon
    I am about to install some 20 servers with the same web application in multiple locations connected to their own local database. I will be updating the web applications remotely (perhaps using debian's package manager) and I'm sure will eventually need to update the database schemas. Since each server could be eventually be using a different release of the web application, I need a way to apply the incremental changes to the servers. I'm thinking something like this. Let's start with database.schema.1 as the original release of the database and assume this number increases with each new version of the schema. I eventually could end up with database.schema.17 as the current release. For a new installation this would be the schema to install. It seems to me that I would need consecutive translations like database.translation.1.2 which would convert database.schema.1 into database.schema.2, database.translation.2.3 to convert from 2 to 3 and so on until 17. It seems that whenever I change a schema I need to alter the database but perhaps I need to run some script to update the data which might be done with SQL but might require an external non sql script. What is the appropriate way to organize all these files? What is the automatic way to apply those upgrades to the schema? Where do I store the current version number of the schema?

    Read the article

  • Can I create support multiple database transactions on a single connection?

    - by draezal
    I have created a HyperSQL Database. I was just wondering whether I could run multiple transactions on a single connection. I didn't want to spawn a new connection for each transaction due to the overhead associated with this. Looking at some similar questions the suggestion appeared to be to create a pool of database connections and then block waiting for one to become available. This is a workable, but not desirable solution. Background Info (if this is relevant to the answer). My application will create a new thread when some request comes in. This request will require a database transaction. Then some not insignificant time later this transaction will be committed. Any advice appreciated :)

    Read the article

  • How I can make Recycle Bin for Database ?Application?

    - by Wael Dalloul
    Hi, I have database application, I want to allow the user to restore the deleted records from the database, like in windows we have Recycle bin for files I want to do the same thing but for database records, Assume that I have a lot of related tables that have a lot of fields. Edit: let's say that I have the following structures: Reports table RepName primary key ReportData Users table ID primary key Name UserReports table RepName primary key UserID primary key IsDeleted now if I put isdeleted field in UserReports table, the user can't add same record again if it marked as deleted, because the record is already and this will make duplication.

    Read the article

  • How to import and export only data of whole database in access 2007

    - by DiegoMaK
    Hi, I have two identical databases with same structure, database a in computer a and database b in computer b. The data of database a*(a.accdb)* and database b*(b.accdb)* are different. then in database a i have for example ID:1, 2, 3 and in database B i Have ID:4,5,6 Then i need merge these databases data in only one database(a or b, doesn't matter) so the final database looks like. ID:1,2,3,4,5,6 I search an easy way to do this. because i have many tables. and do this by union query is so tedious. I search for example for a backup option for only data without scheme as in postgreSQl or many others RDBMS, but i don't see this options in access 2007. pd:only just table could be duplicate values(i guess that pk doesn't allow copy a duplicate value and all others values will be copied well). if i wrong please correct me. thanks for your help.

    Read the article

  • If don't own proprietary database engine, what is best way to convert database to mysql?

    - by John Robertson
    I work for a very small company. I was recently faced with the question of whether there is a good way to convert a proprietary database to a MySQL database without owning the proprietary database engine e.g. if one is given a large oracle database file (or choose your favorite proprietary database engine format), but doesn't have a license for the oracle database engine, is there a good, perfectly reliable way to convert it to a MySQL database format that can be read with the MySQL database engine? My question is very vague as to which proprietary format is the source just because there would be multiple sources and it looks like they would be "various and sundry". My suspicion is that there is no perfectly reliable way, especially for a wide variety of proprietary databases. If there are a few proprietary formats for which this is possible, I would still be interested in knowing, though "various and sundry" is probably the real issue. Minimizing cost, effort and correct conversion are key so I think this is probably is the not possible list. -John

    Read the article

  • PHP database selection issue

    - by Citroenfris
    I'm in a bit of a pickle with freshening up my PHP a bit, it's been about 3 years since I last coded in PHP. Any insights are welcomed! I'll give you as much information as I possibly can to resolve this error so here goes! Files config.php database.php news.php BLnews.php index.php Includes config.php - news.php database.php - news.php news.php - BLnews.php BLnews.php - index.php Now the problem with my current code is that the database connection is being made but my database refuses to be selected. The query I have should work but due to my database not getting selected it's kind of annoying to get any data exchange going! database.php <?php class Database { //------------------------------------------- // Connects to the database //------------------------------------------- function connect() { if (isset($dbhost) && isset($dbuser) && isset($dbpass)) { $con = mysql_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpass) or die("Could not connect: " . mysql_error()); } }// end function connect function selectDB() { if (isset($dbname) && isset($con)) { $selected_db = mysql_select_db($dbname, $con) or die("Could not select test DB"); } } } // end class Database ?> News.php <?php // include the config file and database class include 'config.php'; include 'database.php'; ... ?> BLnews.php <?php // include the news class include 'news.php'; // create an instance of the Database class and call it $db $db = new Database; $db -> connect(); $db->selectDB(); class BLnews { function getNews() { $sql = "SELECT * FROM news"; if (isset($sql)) { $result = mysql_query($sql) or die("Could not execute query. Reason: " .mysql_error()); } return $result; } ?> index.php <?php ... include 'includes/BLnews.php'; $blNews = new BLnews(); $news = $blNews->getNews(); ?> ... <?php while($row = mysql_fetch_array($news)) { echo '<div class="post">'; echo '<h2><a href="#"> ' . $row["title"] .'</a></h2>'; echo '<p class="post-info">Posted by <a href="#"> </a> | <span class="date"> Posted on <a href="#">' . $row["date"] . '</a></span></p>'; echo $row["content"]; echo '</div>'; } ?> Well this is pretty much everything that should get the information going however due to the mysql_error in $result = mysql_query($sql) or die("Could not execute query. Reason: " .mysql_error()); I can see the error and it says: Could not execute query. Reason: No database selected I honestly have no idea why it would not work and I've been fiddling with it for quite some time now. Help is most welcomed and I thank you in advance! Greets Lemon

    Read the article

  • TOTD #166: Using NoSQL database in your Java EE 6 Applications on GlassFish - MongoDB for now!

    - by arungupta
    The Java EE 6 platform includes Java Persistence API to work with RDBMS. The JPA specification defines a comprehensive API that includes, but not restricted to, how a database table can be mapped to a POJO and vice versa, provides mechanisms how a PersistenceContext can be injected in a @Stateless bean and then be used for performing different operations on the database table and write typesafe queries. There are several well known advantages of RDBMS but the NoSQL movement has gained traction over past couple of years. The NoSQL databases are not intended to be a replacement for the mainstream RDBMS. As Philosophy of NoSQL explains, NoSQL database was designed for casual use where all the features typically provided by an RDBMS are not required. The name "NoSQL" is more of a category of databases that is more known for what it is not rather than what it is. The basic principles of NoSQL database are: No need to have a pre-defined schema and that makes them a schema-less database. Addition of new properties to existing objects is easy and does not require ALTER TABLE. The unstructured data gives flexibility to change the format of data any time without downtime or reduced service levels. Also there are no joins happening on the server because there is no structure and thus no relation between them. Scalability and performance is more important than the entire set of functionality typically provided by an RDBMS. This set of databases provide eventual consistency and/or transactions restricted to single items but more focus on CRUD. Not be restricted to SQL to access the information stored in the backing database. Designed to scale-out (horizontal) instead of scale-up (vertical). This is important knowing that databases, and everything else as well, is moving into the cloud. RBDMS can scale-out using sharding but requires complex management and not for the faint of heart. Unlike RBDMS which require a separate caching tier, most of the NoSQL databases comes with integrated caching. Designed for less management and simpler data models lead to lower administration as well. There are primarily three types of NoSQL databases: Key-Value stores (e.g. Cassandra and Riak) Document databases (MongoDB or CouchDB) Graph databases (Neo4J) You may think NoSQL is panacea but as I mentioned above they are not meant to replace the mainstream databases and here is why: RDBMS have been around for many years, very stable, and functionally rich. This is something CIOs and CTOs can bet their money on without much worry. There is a reason 98% of Fortune 100 companies run Oracle :-) NoSQL is cutting edge, brings excitement to developers, but enterprises are cautious about them. Commercial databases like Oracle are well supported by the backing enterprises in terms of providing support resources on a global scale. There is a full ecosystem built around these commercial databases providing training, performance tuning, architecture guidance, and everything else. NoSQL is fairly new and typically backed by a single company not able to meet the scale of these big enterprises. NoSQL databases are good for CRUDing operations but business intelligence is extremely important for enterprises to stay competitive. RDBMS provide extensive tooling to generate this data but that was not the original intention of NoSQL databases and is lacking in that area. Generating any meaningful information other than CRUDing require extensive programming. Not suited for complex transactions such as banking systems or other highly transactional applications requiring 2-phase commit. SQL cannot be used with NoSQL databases and writing simple queries can be involving. Enough talking, lets take a look at some code. This blog has published multiple blogs on how to access a RDBMS using JPA in a Java EE 6 application. This Tip Of The Day (TOTD) will show you can use MongoDB (a document-oriented database) with a typical 3-tier Java EE 6 application. Lets get started! The complete source code of this project can be downloaded here. Download MongoDB for your platform from here (1.8.2 as of this writing) and start the server as: arun@ArunUbuntu:~/tools/mongodb-linux-x86_64-1.8.2/bin$./mongod./mongod --help for help and startup optionsSun Jun 26 20:41:11 [initandlisten] MongoDB starting : pid=11210port=27017 dbpath=/data/db/ 64-bit Sun Jun 26 20:41:11 [initandlisten] db version v1.8.2, pdfile version4.5Sun Jun 26 20:41:11 [initandlisten] git version:433bbaa14aaba6860da15bd4de8edf600f56501bSun Jun 26 20:41:11 [initandlisten] build sys info: Linuxbs-linux64.10gen.cc 2.6.21.7-2.ec2.v1.2.fc8xen #1 SMP Fri Nov 2017:48:28 EST 2009 x86_64 BOOST_LIB_VERSION=1_41Sun Jun 26 20:41:11 [initandlisten] waiting for connections on port 27017Sun Jun 26 20:41:11 [websvr] web admin interface listening on port 28017 The default directory for the database is /data/db and needs to be created as: sudo mkdir -p /data/db/sudo chown `id -u` /data/db You can specify a different directory using "--dbpath" option. Refer to Quickstart for your specific platform. Using NetBeans, create a Java EE 6 project and make sure to enable CDI and add JavaServer Faces framework. Download MongoDB Java Driver (2.6.3 of this writing) and add it to the project library by selecting "Properties", "LIbraries", "Add Library...", creating a new library by specifying the location of the JAR file, and adding the library to the created project. Edit the generated "index.xhtml" such that it looks like: <h1>Add a new movie</h1><h:form> Name: <h:inputText value="#{movie.name}" size="20"/><br/> Year: <h:inputText value="#{movie.year}" size="6"/><br/> Language: <h:inputText value="#{movie.language}" size="20"/><br/> <h:commandButton actionListener="#{movieSessionBean.createMovie}" action="show" title="Add" value="submit"/></h:form> This page has a simple HTML form with three text boxes and a submit button. The text boxes take name, year, and language of a movie and the submit button invokes the "createMovie" method of "movieSessionBean" and then render "show.xhtml". Create "show.xhtml" ("New" -> "Other..." -> "Other" -> "XHTML File") such that it looks like: <head> <title><h1>List of movies</h1></title> </head> <body> <h:form> <h:dataTable value="#{movieSessionBean.movies}" var="m" > <h:column><f:facet name="header">Name</f:facet>#{m.name}</h:column> <h:column><f:facet name="header">Year</f:facet>#{m.year}</h:column> <h:column><f:facet name="header">Language</f:facet>#{m.language}</h:column> </h:dataTable> </h:form> This page shows the name, year, and language of all movies stored in the database so far. The list of movies is returned by "movieSessionBean.movies" property. Now create the "Movie" class such that it looks like: import com.mongodb.BasicDBObject;import com.mongodb.BasicDBObject;import com.mongodb.DBObject;import javax.enterprise.inject.Model;import javax.validation.constraints.Size;/** * @author arun */@Modelpublic class Movie { @Size(min=1, max=20) private String name; @Size(min=1, max=20) private String language; private int year; // getters and setters for "name", "year", "language" public BasicDBObject toDBObject() { BasicDBObject doc = new BasicDBObject(); doc.put("name", name); doc.put("year", year); doc.put("language", language); return doc; } public static Movie fromDBObject(DBObject doc) { Movie m = new Movie(); m.name = (String)doc.get("name"); m.year = (int)doc.get("year"); m.language = (String)doc.get("language"); return m; } @Override public String toString() { return name + ", " + year + ", " + language; }} Other than the usual boilerplate code, the key methods here are "toDBObject" and "fromDBObject". These methods provide a conversion from "Movie" -> "DBObject" and vice versa. The "DBObject" is a MongoDB class that comes as part of the mongo-2.6.3.jar file and which we added to our project earlier.  The complete javadoc for 2.6.3 can be seen here. Notice, this class also uses Bean Validation constraints and will be honored by the JSF layer. Finally, create "MovieSessionBean" stateless EJB with all the business logic such that it looks like: package org.glassfish.samples;import com.mongodb.BasicDBObject;import com.mongodb.DB;import com.mongodb.DBCollection;import com.mongodb.DBCursor;import com.mongodb.DBObject;import com.mongodb.Mongo;import java.net.UnknownHostException;import java.util.ArrayList;import java.util.List;import javax.annotation.PostConstruct;import javax.ejb.Stateless;import javax.inject.Inject;import javax.inject.Named;/** * @author arun */@Stateless@Namedpublic class MovieSessionBean { @Inject Movie movie; DBCollection movieColl; @PostConstruct private void initDB() throws UnknownHostException { Mongo m = new Mongo(); DB db = m.getDB("movieDB"); movieColl = db.getCollection("movies"); if (movieColl == null) { movieColl = db.createCollection("movies", null); } } public void createMovie() { BasicDBObject doc = movie.toDBObject(); movieColl.insert(doc); } public List<Movie> getMovies() { List<Movie> movies = new ArrayList(); DBCursor cur = movieColl.find(); System.out.println("getMovies: Found " + cur.size() + " movie(s)"); for (DBObject dbo : cur.toArray()) { movies.add(Movie.fromDBObject(dbo)); } return movies; }} The database is initialized in @PostConstruct. Instead of a working with a database table, NoSQL databases work with a schema-less document. The "Movie" class is the document in our case and stored in the collection "movies". The collection allows us to perform query functions on all movies. The "getMovies" method invokes "find" method on the collection which is equivalent to the SQL query "select * from movies" and then returns a List<Movie>. Also notice that there is no "persistence.xml" in the project. Right-click and run the project to see the output as: Enter some values in the text box and click on enter to see the result as: If you reached here then you've successfully used MongoDB in your Java EE 6 application, congratulations! Some food for thought and further play ... SQL to MongoDB mapping shows mapping between traditional SQL -> Mongo query language. Tutorial shows fun things you can do with MongoDB. Try the interactive online shell  The cookbook provides common ways of using MongoDB In terms of this project, here are some tasks that can be tried: Encapsulate database management in a JPA persistence provider. Is it even worth it because the capabilities are going to be very different ? MongoDB uses "BSonObject" class for JSON representation, add @XmlRootElement on a POJO and how a compatible JSON representation can be generated. This will make the fromXXX and toXXX methods redundant.

    Read the article

  • SQL – Migrate Database from SQL Server to NuoDB – A Quick Tutorial

    - by Pinal Dave
    Data is growing exponentially and every organization with growing data is thinking of next big innovation in the world of Big Data. Big data is a indeed a future for every organization at one point of the time. Just like every other next big thing, big data has its own challenges and issues. The biggest challenge associated with the big data is to find the ideal platform which supports the scalability and growth of the data. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you must be familiar with NuoDB. I have been working with NuoDB for a while and their recent release is the best thus far. NuoDB is an elastically scalable SQL database that can run on local host, datacenter and cloud-based resources. A key feature of the product is that it does not require sharding (read more here). Last week, I was able to install NuoDB in less than 90 seconds and have explored their Explorer and Admin sections. You can read about my experiences in these posts: SQL – Step by Step Guide to Download and Install NuoDB – Getting Started with NuoDB SQL – Quick Start with Admin Sections of NuoDB – Manage NuoDB Database SQL – Quick Start with Explorer Sections of NuoDB – Query NuoDB Database Many SQL Authority readers have been following me in my journey to evaluate NuoDB. One of the frequently asked questions I’ve received from you is if there is any way to migrate data from SQL Server to NuoDB. The fact is that there is indeed a way to do so and NuoDB provides a fantastic tool which can help users to do it. NuoDB Migrator is a command line utility that supports the migration of Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL schemas and data to NuoDB. The migration to NuoDB is a three-step process: NuoDB Migrator generates a schema for a target NuoDB database It loads data into the target NuoDB database It dumps data from the source database Let’s see how we can migrate our data from SQL Server to NuoDB using a simple three-step approach. But before we do that we will create a sample database in MSSQL and later we will migrate the same database to NuoDB: Setup Step 1: Build a sample data CREATE DATABASE [Test]; CREATE TABLE [Department]( [DepartmentID] [smallint] NOT NULL, [Name] VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, [GroupName] VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, [ModifiedDate] [datetime] NOT NULL, CONSTRAINT [PK_Department_DepartmentID] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( [DepartmentID] ASC ) ) ON [PRIMARY]; INSERT INTO Department SELECT * FROM AdventureWorks2012.HumanResources.Department; Note that I am using the SQL Server AdventureWorks database to build this sample table but you can build this sample table any way you prefer. Setup Step 2: Install Java 64 bit Before you can begin the migration process to NuoDB, make sure you have 64-bit Java installed on your computer. This is due to the fact that the NuoDB Migrator tool is built in Java. You can download 64-bit Java for Windows, Mac OSX, or Linux from the following link: http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp. One more thing to remember is that you make sure that the path in your environment settings is set to your JAVA_HOME directory or else the tool will not work. Here is how you can do it: Go to My Computer >> Right Click >> Select Properties >> Click on Advanced System Settings >> Click on Environment Variables >> Click on New and enter the following values. Variable Name: JAVA_HOME Variable Value: C:\Program Files\Java\jre7 Make sure you enter your Java installation directory in the Variable Value field. Setup Step 3: Install JDBC driver for SQL Server. There are two JDBC drivers available for SQL Server.  Select the one you prefer to use by following one of the two links below: Microsoft JDBC Driver jTDS JDBC Driver In this example we will be using jTDS JDBC driver. Once you download the driver, move the driver to your NuoDB installation folder. In my case, I have moved the JAR file of the driver into the C:\Program Files\NuoDB\tools\migrator\jar folder as this is my NuoDB installation directory. Now we are all set to start the three-step migration process from SQL Server to NuoDB: Migration Step 1: NuoDB Schema Generation Here is the command I use to generate a schema of my SQL Server Database in NuoDB. First I go to the folder C:\Program Files\NuoDB\tools\migrator\bin and execute the nuodb-migrator.bat file. Note that my database name is ‘test’. Additionally my username and password is also ‘test’. You can see that my SQL Server database is running on my localhost on port 1433. Additionally, the schema of the table is ‘dbo’. nuodb-migrator schema –source.driver=net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver –source.url=jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://localhost:1433/ –source.username=test –source.password=test –source.catalog=test –source.schema=dbo –output.path=/tmp/schema.sql The above script will generate a schema of all my SQL Server tables and will put it in the folder C:\tmp\schema.sql . You can open the schema.sql file and execute this file directly in your NuoDB instance. You can follow the link here to see how you can execute the SQL script in NuoDB. Please note that if you have not yet created the schema in the NuoDB database, you should create it before executing this step. Step 2: Generate the Dump File of the Data Once you have recreated your schema in NuoDB from SQL Server, the next step is very easy. Here we create a CSV format dump file, which will contain all the data from all the tables from the SQL Server database. The command to do so is very similar to the above command. Be aware that this step may take a bit of time based on your database size. nuodb-migrator dump –source.driver=net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver –source.url=jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://localhost:1433/ –source.username=test –source.password=test –source.catalog=test –source.schema=dbo –output.type=csv –output.path=/tmp/dump.cat Once the above command is successfully executed you can find your CSV file in the C:\tmp\ folder. However, you do not have to do anything manually. The third and final step will take care of completing the migration process. Migration Step 3: Load the Data into NuoDB After building schema and taking a dump of the data, the very next step is essential and crucial. It will take the CSV file and load it into the NuoDB database. nuodb-migrator load –target.url=jdbc:com.nuodb://localhost:48004/mytest –target.schema=dbo –target.username=test –target.password=test –input.path=/tmp/dump.cat Please note that in the above script we are now targeting the NuoDB database, which we have already created with the name of “MyTest”. If the database does not exist, create it manually before executing the above script. I have kept the username and password as “test”, but please make sure that you create a more secure password for your database for security reasons. Voila!  You’re Done That’s it. You are done. It took 3 setup and 3 migration steps to migrate your SQL Server database to NuoDB.  You can now start exploring the database and build excellent, scale-out applications. In this blog post, I have done my best to come up with simple and easy process, which you can follow to migrate your app from SQL Server to NuoDB. Download NuoDB I strongly encourage you to download NuoDB and go through my 3-step migration tutorial from SQL Server to NuoDB. Additionally here are two very important blog post from NuoDB CTO Seth Proctor. He has written excellent blog posts on the concept of the Administrative Domains. NuoDB has this concept of an Administrative Domain, which is a collection of hosts that can run one or multiple databases.  Each database has its own TEs and SMs, but all are managed within the Admin Console for that particular domain. http://www.nuodb.com/techblog/2013/03/11/getting-started-provisioning-a-domain/ http://www.nuodb.com/techblog/2013/03/14/getting-started-running-a-database/ Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: NuoDB

    Read the article

  • Does it make sense to develop open source python library for database inspection?

    - by gruszczy
    Some time ago I came up with an idea for a library for database inspection. I started developing it and got some very basic functionality, just to check if that's possible. Recently however, I get second thoughts, whether such project would really be useful. I am actually planning to develop following software suite: library for python, that would provide easy interface to inspect database structure, desktop application in PyQt that would use the interface to provide graphical database inspection, web application in Django that would use the interface to provide database inspection through the browser. Do you think such suite would be useful for other developers/database administrators/analysts? I know, that there is pgadmin for PostgreSQL and some tool for sqlite3 and that there is Java tool called DBInspect. Usually I would be against creating new tool and rather join existing project, but I am not Java programmer (and I would rather stick to python or C, which I like) and none of these projects provide a library for database inspection. Anyway I would like to hear some opinions from fellow developers, whether such project make sense or I should try to spend my free time on developing something else.

    Read the article

  • SQL University: What and why of database testing

    - by Mladen Prajdic
    This is a post for a great idea called SQL University started by Jorge Segarra also famously known as SqlChicken on Twitter. It’s a collection of blog posts on different database related topics contributed by several smart people all over the world. So this week is mine and we’ll be talking about database testing and refactoring. In 3 posts we’ll cover: SQLU part 1 - What and why of database testing SQLU part 2 - What and why of database refactoring SQLU part 2 – Tools of the trade With that out of the way let us sharpen our pencils and get going. Why test a database The sad state of the industry today is that there is very little emphasis on testing in general. Test driven development is still a small niche of the programming world while refactoring is even smaller. The cause of this is the inability of developers to convince themselves and their managers that writing tests is beneficial. At the moment they are mostly viewed as waste of time. This is because the average person (let’s not fool ourselves, we’re all average) is unable to think about lower future costs in relation to little more current work. It’s orders of magnitude easier to know about the current costs in relation to current amount of work. That’s why programmers convince themselves testing is a waste of time. However we have to ask ourselves what tests are really about? Maybe finding bugs? No, not really. If we introduce bugs, we’re likely to write test around those bugs too. But yes we can find some bugs with tests. The main point of tests is to have reproducible repeatability in our systems. By having a code base largely covered by tests we can know with better certainty what a small code change can break in other parts of the system. By having repeatability we can make code changes with confidence, since we know we’ll see what breaks in other tests. And here comes the inability to estimate future costs. By spending just a few more hours writing those tests we’d know instantly what broke where. Imagine we fix a reported bug. We check-in the code, deploy it and the users are happy. Until we get a call 2 weeks later about a certain monthly process has stopped working. What we don’t know is that this process was developed by a long gone coworker and for some reason it relied on that same bug we’ve happily fixed. There’s no way we could’ve known that. We say OK and go in and fix the monthly process. But what we have no clue about is that there’s this ETL job that relied on data from that monthly process. Now that we’ve fixed the process it’s giving unexpected (yet correct since we fixed it) data to the ETL job. So we have to fix that too. But there’s this part of the app we coded that relies on data from that exact ETL job. And just like that we enter the “Loop of maintenance horror”. With the loop eventually comes blame. Here’s a nice tip for all developers and DBAs out there: If you make a mistake man up and admit to it. All of the above is valid for any kind of software development. Keeping this in mind the database is nothing other than just a part of the application. But a big part! One reason why testing a database is even more important than testing an application is that one database is usually accessed from multiple applications and processes. This makes it the central and vital part of the enterprise software infrastructure. Knowing all this can we really afford not to have tests? What to test in a database Now that we’ve decided we’ll dive into this testing thing we have to ask ourselves what needs to be tested? The short answer is: everything. The long answer is: read on! There are 2 main ways of doing tests: Black box and White box testing. Black box testing means we have no idea how the system internals are built and we only have access to it’s inputs and outputs. With it we test that the internal changes to the system haven’t caused the input/output behavior of the system to change. The most important thing to test here are the edge conditions. It’s where most programs break. Having good edge condition tests we can be more confident that the systems changes won’t break. White box testing has the full knowledge of the system internals. With it we test the internal system changes, different states of the application, etc… White and Black box tests should be complementary to each other as they are very much interconnected. Testing database routines includes testing stored procedures, views, user defined functions and anything you use to access the data with. Database routines are your input/output interface to the database system. They count as black box testing. We test then for 2 things: Data and schema. When testing schema we only care about the columns and the data types they’re returning. After all the schema is the contract to the out side systems. If it changes we usually have to change the applications accessing it. One helpful T-SQL command when doing schema tests is SET FMTONLY ON. It tells the SQL Server to return only empty results sets. This speeds up tests because it doesn’t return any data to the client. After we’ve validated the schema we have to test the returned data. There no other way to do this but to have expected data known before the tests executes and comparing that data to the database routine output. Testing Authentication and Authorization helps us validate who has access to the SQL Server box (Authentication) and who has access to certain database objects (Authorization). For desktop applications and windows authentication this works well. But the biggest problem here are web apps. They usually connect to the database as a single user. Please ensure that that user is not SA or an account with admin privileges. That is just bad. Load testing ensures us that our database can handle peak loads. One often overlooked tool for load testing is Microsoft’s OSTRESS tool. It’s part of RML utilities (x86, x64) for SQL Server and can help determine if our database server can handle loads like 100 simultaneous users each doing 10 requests per second. SQL Profiler can also help us here by looking at why certain queries are slow and what to do to fix them.   One particular problem to think about is how to begin testing existing databases. First thing we have to do is to get to know those databases. We can’t test something when we don’t know how it works. To do this we have to talk to the users of the applications accessing the database, run SQL Profiler to see what queries are being run, use existing documentation to decipher all the object relationships, etc… The way to approach this is to choose one part of the database (say a logical grouping of tables that go together) and filter our traces accordingly. Once we’ve done that we move on to the next grouping and so on until we’ve covered the whole database. Then we move on to the next one. Database Testing is a topic that we can spent many hours discussing but let this be a nice intro to the world of database testing. See you in the next post.

    Read the article

  • Data Guard - Snapshot Standby Database??

    - by Jian Zhang-Oracle
    ?? -------- ?????,??standby?????mount??????????REDO??,??standby????????????????????,???????read-only???open????,????ACTIVE DATA GUARD,????standby?????????(read-only)??(????????),????standby???????????(read-write)? ?????,?????????????Real Application Testing(RAT)??????????,?????????standby??????snapshot standby?????????,??snapshot standby??????????,???????????(read-write)??????snapshot standby??????????????,?????????,??????????,????????,?????????snapshot standby?????standby???,????????? ?? ---------  1.??standby?????? SQL> Alter system set db_recovery_file_dest_size=500M; System altered. SQL> Alter system set db_recovery_file_dest='/u01/app/oracle/snapshot_standby'; System altered. 2.??standby?????? SQL> alter database recover managed standby database cancel; Database altered. 3.??standby???snapshot standby,??open snapshot standby SQL> alter database convert to snapshot standby; Database altered. SQL> alter database open;    Database altered. ??snapshot standby??????SNAPSHOT STANDBY,open???READ WRITE: SQL> select DATABASE_ROLE,name,OPEN_MODE from v$database; DATABASE_ROLE    NAME      OPEN_MODE ---------------- --------- -------------------- SNAPSHOT STANDBY FSDB      READ WRITE 4.?snapshot standby???????????Real Application Testing(RAT)????????? 5.?????,??snapshot standby???physical standby,?????????? SQL> shutdown immediate; Database closed. Database dismounted. ORACLE instance shut down. SQL> startup mount; ORACLE instance started. Database mounted. SQL> ALTER DATABASE CONVERT TO PHYSICAL STANDBY; Database altered. SQL> shutdown immediate; ORA-01507: database not mounted ORACLE instance shut down. SQL> startup mount; ORACLE instance started. Database mounted. SQL>ALTER DATABASE RECOVER MANAGED STANDBY DATABASE DISCONNECT FROM SESSION; Database altered. 5.?????standby?,???????PHYSICAL STANDBY,open???MOUNTED SQL> select DATABASE_ROLE,name,OPEN_MODE from v$database; DATABASE_ROLE    NAME      OPEN_MODE ---------------- --------- -------------------- PHYSICAL STANDBY FSDB      MOUNTED 6.??????????????? ????: SQL> select ads.dest_id,max(sequence#) "Current Sequence",            max(log_sequence) "Last Archived"        from v$archived_log al, v$archive_dest ad, v$archive_dest_status ads        where ad.dest_id=al.dest_id        and al.dest_id=ads.dest_id        and al.resetlogs_change#=(select max(resetlogs_change#) from v$archived_log )        group by ads.dest_id;    DEST_ID Current Sequence Last Archived ---------- ---------------- -------------      1              361           361      2              361           362 --???? SQL>    select al.thrd "Thread", almax "Last Seq Received", lhmax "Last Seq Applied"       from (select thread# thrd, max(sequence#) almax           from v$archived_log           where resetlogs_change#=(select resetlogs_change# from v$database)           group by thread#) al,          (select thread# thrd, max(sequence#) lhmax           from v$log_history           where resetlogs_change#=(select resetlogs_change# from v$database)           group by thread#) lh      where al.thrd = lh.thrd;     Thread Last Seq Received Last Seq Applied ---------- ----------------- ----------------          1               361              361 ??????????,???blog,???????????,??"??:Data Guard - Snapshot Standby Database??" 

    Read the article

  • What are some good tips for a developer trying to design a scalable MySQL database?

    - by CFL_Jeff
    As the question states, I am a developer, not a DBA. I have experience with designing good ER schemas and am fairly knowledgeable about normalization and good schema design. I have also worked with data warehouses that use dimensional modeling with fact tables and dim tables. However, all of the database-driven applications I've developed at previous jobs have been internal applications on the company's intranet, never receiving "real-world traffic". Furthermore, at previous jobs, I have always had a DBA or someone who knew much more than me about these things. At this new job I just started, I've been asked to develop a public-facing application with a MySQL backend and the data stored by this application is expected to grow very rapidly. Oh, and we don't have a DBA. Well, I guess I am the DBA. ;) As far as designing a database to be scalable, I don't even know where to start. Does anyone have any good tips or know of any good educational materials for a developer who has been sort of shoved into a DBA/database designer role and has been tasked with designing a scalable database to support an application like this? Have any other developers been through this sort of thing? What did you do to quickly become good at this role? I've found some good slides on the subject here but it's hard to glean details from slides. Wish I could've attended that guy's talk. I also found a good blog entry called 5 Ways to Boost MySQL Scalability which had some good information, though some of it was over my head. tl;dr I just want to make sure the database doesn't have to be completely redesigned when it scales up, and I'm looking for tips to get it right the first time. The answer I'm looking for is a "list of things every developer should know about making a scalable MySQL database so your application doesn't perform like crap when the data gets huge".

    Read the article

  • Violating 1st normal form, is it okay for my purpose?

    - by Nick
    So I'm making a running log, and I have the workouts stored as entries in a table. For each workout, the user can add intervals (which consist of a time and a distance), so I have an array like this: [workout] => [description] => [comments] => ... [intervals] => [0] => [distance] => 200m [time] => 32 [1] => [distance] => 400m [time] => 65 ... I'm really tempted to throw the "intervals" array into serialize() or json_encode() and put it in an "intervals" field in my table, however this violates the principles of good database design (which, incidentally, I know hardly anything about). Is there any disadvantage to doing this? I never plan on querying my table based on the contents of "intervals". Creating a separate table just for intervals seems like a lot of unnecessary complexity, so if anyone with more experience has had a situation like this, what route did you take and how did it work out?

    Read the article

  • Temporary users table or legitimate users table?

    - by John
    I have a freelance web application that lets users register for events. In my database, I have a t_events_applicants table with the column t_events_applications.user_id with a foreign key constraint linked to the t_users.user_id column. So this means only users who have registered with my web application can register for my web application's events. My client would now like to allow non-registered users, users who do not have an entry in my t_user table, to register for events. These non-registered users only need to provide their name and email address to register for events. Should I create a t_temporary_user table with columns name and email and then remove the t_events_applicants.user_id fk constraint? Or should I add un-registered users to the t_user table and then add a column called t_user.type where type can be 'registered' or 'non-registered'? How do I decide which approach to go with? A lot of times, I hesitate with either approach. I ask myself, "What if at a later time, a temporary user is allowed to become a fully registered user? Then maybe I should have only a t_user table. But then I also don't feel good about storing a lot of temporary users in t_user."

    Read the article

  • Help Optimizing MySQL Table (~ 500,000 records) and PHP Code.

    - by Pyrite
    I have a MySQL table that collects player data from various game servers (Urban Terror). The bot that collects the data runs 24/7, and currently the table is up to about 475,000+ records. Because of this, querying this table from PHP has become quite slow. I wonder what I can do on the database side of things to make it as optomized as possible, then I can focus on the application to query the database. The table is as follows: CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `people` ( `id` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `name` varchar(40) NOT NULL, `ip` int(4) unsigned NOT NULL, `guid` varchar(32) NOT NULL, `server` int(4) unsigned NOT NULL, `date` int(11) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id`), UNIQUE KEY `Person` (`name`,`ip`,`guid`), KEY `server` (`server`), KEY `date` (`date`), KEY `PlayerName` (`name`) ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 COMMENT='People that Play on Servers' AUTO_INCREMENT=475843 ; I'm storying the IPv4 (ip and server) as 4 byte integers, and using the MySQL functions NTOA(), etc to encode and decode, I heard that this way is faster, rather than varchar(15). The guid is a md5sum, 32 char hex. Date is stored as unix timestamp. I have a unique key on name, ip and guid, as to avoid duplicates of the same player. Do I have my keys setup right? Is the way I'm storing data efficient? Here is the code to query this table. You search for a name, ip, or guid, and it grabs the results of the query and cross references other records that match the name, ip, or guid from the results of the first query, and does it for each field. This is kind of hard to explain. But basically, if I search for one player by name, I'll see every other name he has used, every IP he has used and every GUID he has used. <form action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>" method="post"> Search: <input type="text" name="query" id="query" /><input type="submit" name="btnSubmit" value="Submit" /> </form> <?php if (!empty($_POST['query'])) { ?> <table cellspacing="1" id="1up_people" class="tablesorter" width="300"> <thead> <tr> <th>ID</th> <th>Player Name</th> <th>Player IP</th> <th>Player GUID</th> <th>Server</th> <th>Date</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <?php function super_unique($array) { $result = array_map("unserialize", array_unique(array_map("serialize", $array))); foreach ($result as $key => $value) { if ( is_array($value) ) { $result[$key] = super_unique($value); } } return $result; } if (!empty($_POST['query'])) { $query = trim($_POST['query']); $count = 0; $people = array(); $link = mysql_connect('localhost', 'mysqluser', 'yea right!'); if (!$link) { die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error()); } mysql_select_db("1up"); $sql = "SELECT id, name, INET_NTOA(ip) AS ip, guid, INET_NTOA(server) AS server, date FROM 1up_people WHERE (name LIKE \"%$query%\" OR INET_NTOA(ip) LIKE \"%$query%\" OR guid LIKE \"%$query%\")"; $result = mysql_query($sql, $link); if (!$result) { die(mysql_error()); } // Now take the initial results and parse each column into its own array while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_NUM)) { $name = htmlspecialchars($row[1]); $people[] = array( 'id' => $row[0], 'name' => $name, 'ip' => $row[2], 'guid' => $row[3], 'server' => $row[4], 'date' => $row[5] ); } // now for each name, ip, guid in results, find additonal records $people2 = array(); foreach ($people AS $person) { $ip = $person['ip']; $sql = "SELECT id, name, INET_NTOA(ip) AS ip, guid, INET_NTOA(server) AS server, date FROM 1up_people WHERE (ip = \"$ip\")"; $result = mysql_query($sql, $link); while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_NUM)) { $name = htmlspecialchars($row[1]); $people2[] = array( 'id' => $row[0], 'name' => $name, 'ip' => $row[2], 'guid' => $row[3], 'server' => $row[4], 'date' => $row[5] ); } } $people3 = array(); foreach ($people AS $person) { $guid = $person['guid']; $sql = "SELECT id, name, INET_NTOA(ip) AS ip, guid, INET_NTOA(server) AS server, date FROM 1up_people WHERE (guid = \"$guid\")"; $result = mysql_query($sql, $link); while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_NUM)) { $name = htmlspecialchars($row[1]); $people3[] = array( 'id' => $row[0], 'name' => $name, 'ip' => $row[2], 'guid' => $row[3], 'server' => $row[4], 'date' => $row[5] ); } } $people4 = array(); foreach ($people AS $person) { $name = $person['name']; $sql = "SELECT id, name, INET_NTOA(ip) AS ip, guid, INET_NTOA(server) AS server, date FROM 1up_people WHERE (name = \"$name\")"; $result = mysql_query($sql, $link); while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_NUM)) { $name = htmlspecialchars($row[1]); $people4[] = array( 'id' => $row[0], 'name' => $name, 'ip' => $row[2], 'guid' => $row[3], 'server' => $row[4], 'date' => $row[5] ); } } // Combine people and people2 into just people $people = array_merge($people, $people2); $people = array_merge($people, $people3); $people = array_merge($people, $people4); $people = super_unique($people); foreach ($people AS $person) { $date = ($person['date']) ? date("M d, Y", $person['date']) : 'Before 8/1/10'; echo "<tr>\n"; echo "<td>".$person['id']."</td>"; echo "<td>".$person['name']."</td>"; echo "<td>".$person['ip']."</td>"; echo "<td>".$person['guid']."</td>"; echo "<td>".$person['server']."</td>"; echo "<td>".$date."</td>"; echo "</tr>\n"; $count++; } // Find Total Records //$result = mysql_query("SELECT id FROM 1up_people", $link); //$total = mysql_num_rows($result); mysql_close($link); } ?> </tbody> </table> <p> <?php echo $count." Records Found for \"".$_POST['query']."\" out of $total"; ?> </p> <?php } $time_stop = microtime(true); print("Done (ran for ".round($time_stop-$time_start)." seconds)."); ?> Any help at all is appreciated! Thank you.

    Read the article

  • Help Optimizing MySQL Table (~ 500,000 records).

    - by Pyrite
    I have a MySQL table that collects player data from various game servers (Urban Terror). The bot that collects the data runs 24/7, and currently the table is up to about 475,000+ records. Because of this, querying this table from PHP has become quite slow. I wonder what I can do on the database side of things to make it as optomized as possible, then I can focus on the application to query the database. The table is as follows: CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `people` ( `id` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `name` varchar(40) NOT NULL, `ip` int(4) unsigned NOT NULL, `guid` varchar(32) NOT NULL, `server` int(4) unsigned NOT NULL, `date` int(11) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id`), UNIQUE KEY `Person` (`name`,`ip`,`guid`), KEY `server` (`server`), KEY `date` (`date`), KEY `PlayerName` (`name`) ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 COMMENT='People that Play on Servers' AUTO_INCREMENT=475843 ; I'm storying the IPv4 (ip and server) as 4 byte integers, and using the MySQL functions NTOA(), etc to encode and decode, I heard that this way is faster, rather than varchar(15). The guid is a md5sum, 32 char hex. Date is stored as unix timestamp. I have a unique key on name, ip and guid, as to avoid duplicates of the same player. Do I have my keys setup right? Is the way I'm storing data efficient? Here is the code to query this table. You search for a name, ip, or guid, and it grabs the results of the query and cross references other records that match the name, ip, or guid from the results of the first query, and does it for each field. This is kind of hard to explain. But basically, if I search for one player by name, I'll see every other name he has used, every IP he has used and every GUID he has used. <form action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>" method="post"> Search: <input type="text" name="query" id="query" /><input type="submit" name="btnSubmit" value="Submit" /> </form> <?php if (!empty($_POST['query'])) { ?> <table cellspacing="1" id="1up_people" class="tablesorter" width="300"> <thead> <tr> <th>ID</th> <th>Player Name</th> <th>Player IP</th> <th>Player GUID</th> <th>Server</th> <th>Date</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <?php function super_unique($array) { $result = array_map("unserialize", array_unique(array_map("serialize", $array))); foreach ($result as $key => $value) { if ( is_array($value) ) { $result[$key] = super_unique($value); } } return $result; } if (!empty($_POST['query'])) { $query = trim($_POST['query']); $count = 0; $people = array(); $link = mysql_connect('localhost', 'mysqluser', 'yea right!'); if (!$link) { die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error()); } mysql_select_db("1up"); $sql = "SELECT id, name, INET_NTOA(ip) AS ip, guid, INET_NTOA(server) AS server, date FROM 1up_people WHERE (name LIKE \"%$query%\" OR INET_NTOA(ip) LIKE \"%$query%\" OR guid LIKE \"%$query%\")"; $result = mysql_query($sql, $link); if (!$result) { die(mysql_error()); } // Now take the initial results and parse each column into its own array while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_NUM)) { $name = htmlspecialchars($row[1]); $people[] = array( 'id' => $row[0], 'name' => $name, 'ip' => $row[2], 'guid' => $row[3], 'server' => $row[4], 'date' => $row[5] ); } // now for each name, ip, guid in results, find additonal records $people2 = array(); foreach ($people AS $person) { $ip = $person['ip']; $sql = "SELECT id, name, INET_NTOA(ip) AS ip, guid, INET_NTOA(server) AS server, date FROM 1up_people WHERE (ip = \"$ip\")"; $result = mysql_query($sql, $link); while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_NUM)) { $name = htmlspecialchars($row[1]); $people2[] = array( 'id' => $row[0], 'name' => $name, 'ip' => $row[2], 'guid' => $row[3], 'server' => $row[4], 'date' => $row[5] ); } } $people3 = array(); foreach ($people AS $person) { $guid = $person['guid']; $sql = "SELECT id, name, INET_NTOA(ip) AS ip, guid, INET_NTOA(server) AS server, date FROM 1up_people WHERE (guid = \"$guid\")"; $result = mysql_query($sql, $link); while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_NUM)) { $name = htmlspecialchars($row[1]); $people3[] = array( 'id' => $row[0], 'name' => $name, 'ip' => $row[2], 'guid' => $row[3], 'server' => $row[4], 'date' => $row[5] ); } } $people4 = array(); foreach ($people AS $person) { $name = $person['name']; $sql = "SELECT id, name, INET_NTOA(ip) AS ip, guid, INET_NTOA(server) AS server, date FROM 1up_people WHERE (name = \"$name\")"; $result = mysql_query($sql, $link); while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_NUM)) { $name = htmlspecialchars($row[1]); $people4[] = array( 'id' => $row[0], 'name' => $name, 'ip' => $row[2], 'guid' => $row[3], 'server' => $row[4], 'date' => $row[5] ); } } // Combine people and people2 into just people $people = array_merge($people, $people2); $people = array_merge($people, $people3); $people = array_merge($people, $people4); $people = super_unique($people); foreach ($people AS $person) { $date = ($person['date']) ? date("M d, Y", $person['date']) : 'Before 8/1/10'; echo "<tr>\n"; echo "<td>".$person['id']."</td>"; echo "<td>".$person['name']."</td>"; echo "<td>".$person['ip']."</td>"; echo "<td>".$person['guid']."</td>"; echo "<td>".$person['server']."</td>"; echo "<td>".$date."</td>"; echo "</tr>\n"; $count++; } // Find Total Records //$result = mysql_query("SELECT id FROM 1up_people", $link); //$total = mysql_num_rows($result); mysql_close($link); } ?> </tbody> </table> <p> <?php echo $count." Records Found for \"".$_POST['query']."\" out of $total"; ?> </p> <?php } $time_stop = microtime(true); print("Done (ran for ".round($time_stop-$time_start)." seconds)."); ?> Any help at all is appreciated! Thank you.

    Read the article

  • split a database web application - good idea or bad idea?

    - by Khou
    Is it a bad idea to split up a application and the database? Application1 uses database1 on ServerX Application2 uses database2 on ServerY Both application communicates over web service API, they are apart of the same application, one application is used to manage user's profile/personal data, while the other application is used to manages user's financial data. Or should just put them together and just use 1 database on the same server?

    Read the article

  • How to choose between UUIDs, autoincrement/sequence keys and sequence tables for database primary keys?

    - by Tim
    I'm looking at the pros and cons of these three primary methods of coming up with primary keys for database rows. So assuming I am using a database that supports more than one of these methods, is there a simple heuristic to determine what the best option would be for me? How do considerations such a distributed/multiple masters, performance requirements, ORM use, security and testing have on the choice? Any unexpected drawbacks that one might run into?

    Read the article

  • How to restore your production database without needing additional storage

    - by David Atkinson
    Production databases can get very large. This in itself is to be expected, but when a copy of the database is needed the database must be restored, requiring additional and costly storage.  For example, if you want to give each developer a full copy of your production server, you'll need n times the storage cost for your n-developer team. The same is true for any test databases that are created during the course of your project lifecycle. If you've read my previous blog posts, you'll be aware that I've been focusing on the database continuous integration theme. In my CI setup I create a "production"-equivalent database directly from its source control representation, and use this to test my upgrade scripts. Despite this being a perfectly valid and practical thing to do as part of a CI setup, it's not the exact equivalent to running the upgrade script on a copy of the actual production database. So why shouldn't I instead simply restore the most recent production backup as part of my CI process? There are two reasons why this would be impractical. 1. My CI environment isn't an exact copy of my production environment. Indeed, this would be the case in a perfect world, and it is strongly recommended as a good practice if you follow Jez Humble and David Farley's "Continuous Delivery" teachings, but in practical terms this might not always be possible, especially where storage is concerned. It may just not be possible to restore a huge production database on the environment you've been allotted. 2. It's not just about the storage requirements, it's also the time it takes to do the restore. The whole point of continuous integration is that you are alerted as early as possible whether the build (yes, the database upgrade script counts!) is broken. If I have to run an hour-long restore each time I commit a change to source control I'm just not going to get the feedback quickly enough to react. So what's the solution? Red Gate has a technology, SQL Virtual Restore, that is able to restore a database without using up additional storage. Although this sounds too good to be true, the explanation is quite simple (although I'm sure the technical implementation details under the hood are quite complex!) Instead of restoring the backup in the conventional sense, SQL Virtual Restore will effectively mount the backup using its HyperBac technology. It creates a data and log file, .vmdf, and .vldf, that becomes the delta between the .bak file and the virtual database. This means that both read and write operations are permitted on a virtual database as from SQL Server's point of view it is no different from a conventional database. Instead of doubling the storage requirements upon a restore, there is no 'duplicate' storage requirements, other than the trivially small virtual log and data files (see illustration below). The benefit is magnified the more databases you mount to the same backup file. This technique could be used to provide a large development team a full development instance of a large production database. It is also incredibly easy to set up. Once SQL Virtual Restore is installed, you simply run a conventional RESTORE command to create the virtual database. This is what I have running as part of a nightly "release test" process triggered by my CI tool. RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_virtual FROM DISK=N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction.bak' WITH MOVE N'WidgetProduction' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vmdf', MOVE N'WidgetProduction_log' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_log_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vldf', NORECOVERY, STATS=1, REPLACE GO RESTORE DATABASE mydatabase WITH RECOVERY   Note the only change from what you would do normally is the naming of the .vmdf and .vldf files. SQL Virtual Restore intercepts this by monitoring the extension and applies its magic, ensuring the 'virtual' restore happens rather than the conventional storage-heavy restore. My automated release test then applies the upgrade scripts to the virtual production database and runs some validation tests, giving me confidence that were I to run this on production for real, all would go smoothly. For illustration, here is my 8Gb production database: And its corresponding backup file: Here are the .vldf and .vmdf files, which represent the only additional used storage for the new database following the virtual restore.   The beauty of this product is its simplicity. Once it is installed, the interaction with the backup and virtual database is exactly the same as before, as the clever stuff is being done at a lower level. SQL Virtual Restore can be downloaded as a fully functional 14-day trial. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

    Read the article

  • How to restore your production database without needing additional storage

    - by David Atkinson
    Production databases can get very large. This in itself is to be expected, but when a copy of the database is needed the database must be restored, requiring additional and costly storage.  For example, if you want to give each developer a full copy of your production server, you’ll need n times the storage cost for your n-developer team. The same is true for any test databases that are created during the course of your project lifecycle. If you’ve read my previous blog posts, you’ll be aware that I’ve been focusing on the database continuous integration theme. In my CI setup I create a “production”-equivalent database directly from its source control representation, and use this to test my upgrade scripts. Despite this being a perfectly valid and practical thing to do as part of a CI setup, it’s not the exact equivalent to running the upgrade script on a copy of the actual production database. So why shouldn’t I instead simply restore the most recent production backup as part of my CI process? There are two reasons why this would be impractical. 1. My CI environment isn’t an exact copy of my production environment. Indeed, this would be the case in a perfect world, and it is strongly recommended as a good practice if you follow Jez Humble and David Farley’s “Continuous Delivery” teachings, but in practical terms this might not always be possible, especially where storage is concerned. It may just not be possible to restore a huge production database on the environment you’ve been allotted. 2. It’s not just about the storage requirements, it’s also the time it takes to do the restore. The whole point of continuous integration is that you are alerted as early as possible whether the build (yes, the database upgrade script counts!) is broken. If I have to run an hour-long restore each time I commit a change to source control I’m just not going to get the feedback quickly enough to react. So what’s the solution? Red Gate has a technology, SQL Virtual Restore, that is able to restore a database without using up additional storage. Although this sounds too good to be true, the explanation is quite simple (although I’m sure the technical implementation details under the hood are quite complex!) Instead of restoring the backup in the conventional sense, SQL Virtual Restore will effectively mount the backup using its HyperBac technology. It creates a data and log file, .vmdf, and .vldf, that becomes the delta between the .bak file and the virtual database. This means that both read and write operations are permitted on a virtual database as from SQL Server’s point of view it is no different from a conventional database. Instead of doubling the storage requirements upon a restore, there is no ‘duplicate’ storage requirements, other than the trivially small virtual log and data files (see illustration below). The benefit is magnified the more databases you mount to the same backup file. This technique could be used to provide a large development team a full development instance of a large production database. It is also incredibly easy to set up. Once SQL Virtual Restore is installed, you simply run a conventional RESTORE command to create the virtual database. This is what I have running as part of a nightly “release test” process triggered by my CI tool. RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_Virtual FROM DISK=N'D:\VirtualDatabase\WidgetProduction.bak' WITH MOVE N'WidgetProduction' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vmdf', MOVE N'WidgetProduction_log' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_log_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vldf', NORECOVERY, STATS=1, REPLACE GO RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_Virtual WITH RECOVERY   Note the only change from what you would do normally is the naming of the .vmdf and .vldf files. SQL Virtual Restore intercepts this by monitoring the extension and applies its magic, ensuring the ‘virtual’ restore happens rather than the conventional storage-heavy restore. My automated release test then applies the upgrade scripts to the virtual production database and runs some validation tests, giving me confidence that were I to run this on production for real, all would go smoothly. For illustration, here is my 8Gb production database: And its corresponding backup file: Here are the .vldf and .vmdf files, which represent the only additional used storage for the new database following the virtual restore.   The beauty of this product is its simplicity. Once it is installed, the interaction with the backup and virtual database is exactly the same as before, as the clever stuff is being done at a lower level. SQL Virtual Restore can be downloaded as a fully functional 14-day trial. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34  | Next Page >