Six different methods to copy tables between databases in SQL Server November 16, 2018 by Prashanth Jayaram In this article, you’ll learn the key skills that you need to copy tables between SQL Server instances including both on-premises and cloud SQL databases. In this article, I’ll walk-through several ways of copying a table(s) between SQL databases, helping you to see the benefits and trade-offs of each option. Read more »
SQL Server database migrations with zero data loss and zero downtime August 15, 2018 by Prashanth Jayaram The growing importance and complexity of data migration, in an era of exploding data volumes and ever-changing business requirements, means that old approaches will no longer get the job done. We are in a world where everything needs to run instantly. Every Database Administrator or Developer would have definitely heard about database migrations with zero downtime and with zero data loss. Read more »
A concrete example of migration between an Oracle Database and SQL Server using Microsoft Data Migration Assistant April 12, 2018 by Jefferson Elias Introduction Intended audience This document is intended for application developers and database administrators who plan to migrate an Oracle Database to Microsoft SQL Server. Context In the previous article, we saw how to install and prepare to migrate one or more Oracle Schema(s) and their objects to SQL Server. Now it’s time to go through the migration process… Read more »
The end is nigh! (For SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2) April 4, 2018 by Minette Steynberg Introduction As with everything else, all good things must come to an end. After hanging around for a good decade SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 has started the countdown to its End of Life. D-day for SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 is set to the 19th of July 2019. Which is approximately a year from now, give or take a couple of months. If you are still running SQL Server 2008 or SQL Server 2008 R2, now is definitely the time to upgrade. In this article; I am going to tell you why you would want to upgrade to a newer version of SQL Server (2016 or 2017) or Azure SQL Database. I will also discuss some of the tools that you might use to make the upgrade as painless as possible. Read more »
Migrating an Oracle Database to SQL Server with Microsoft Data Migration Assistant – Installation Process and Short Overview March 27, 2018 by Jefferson Elias Intended audience This document is intended for application developers and database administrators who plan to migrate an Oracle Database to Microsoft SQL Server. Context Nowadays, most IT professionals are aware that Oracle Database is a very good database solution, but it’s not inexpensive, to say the least. If you want to partition a table in Oracle, it’s an option that you must pay for, which is the same for advanced security options like Database Encryption or Dynamic Data Masking. In contrast, SQL Server comes with these options out of the box when you use the Enterprise Edition. Read more »
How to migrate SQL Server 2017 Master Data Services Models into another server March 23, 2018 by Sifiso W. Ndlovu Often as consultants, we don’t get to work onsite alongside our clients instead we are given copies of clients’ production environment and work on proposed solutions back at our offices. Once development has been completed, we then deploy and integrate our solution back to the client’s production environment. I’ve recently had to adopt a similar offsite development approach whilst working on a project that included development and configuration of master data services. In this article, I will demonstrate how a SQL Server 2017 Master Data Services (MDS) model can be exported from one environment (i.e. MDS Dev) and deployed into another environment (i.e. MDS Prod). Read more »
An overview of SQL Server database migration tools provided by Microsoft March 16, 2018 by Jefferson Elias Database migration is part of the DBA job. We can’t avoid it, and there are multiple options that can be taken: From SQL Server to SQL Server From another platform (Oracle Database, MySQL, PosgreSQL…) to SQL Server From SQL Server to another platform (Oracle Database, MySQL, PosgreSQL…) Read more »
Migrating SSRS content with PowerShell January 29, 2018 by Craig Porteous With a distinct lack of up-to-date, fully featured or built-in options to get Reporting Services content cleanly from A to B, it can often be a challenging task maintaining proper Development and QA environments or even moving reports from a SharePoint integrated installation to a native mode one, and vice versa. I want to explore the two most efficient methods of bulk-migrating Reporting Services content & also explore other options I’ve used over the years and those that have come and gone. Read more »
How to move SQL database files (MDF and LDF) to another location January 22, 2018 by Marko Radakovic How often you got to the point that for any reason you don’t have enough space on the specific drive to host a database? In case of database development or other tasks outside the production environment, this should not be a problem as a database can be eventually re-created, restored from a backup and set to be hosted on another location. By default, SQL Server stores database files in its installation folder, specifically in the Data folder: Read more »
SQL Server DB Migration – Cloning a database to another collation September 19, 2017 by Prashanth Jayaram Database migration is a vital task in any environment, complex or otherwise. Seamless migrations are the goal but the efforts required to ensure it are tremendous. Backing up and restoring the database is surely a preferred and a robust approach, but does it work well in all situations? How do we plan this when the source and the destination databases need different configurations? How do we make such a migration seamless? Read more »
How to migrate MySQL tables to Microsoft Azure SQL database May 18, 2017 by Daniel Calbimonte Introduction Today, it is a common practice to migrate our local data to Azure. Sometimes, we migrate files, sometimes databases and sometimes virtual machines. All the service in the cloud including Azure help a lot to simplify the administrative effort and reduce costs. Read more »
Migrate an SQL database from Windows to Linux using backup-and-restore and SMB Protocol May 16, 2017 by Prashanth Jayaram In an attempt decouple systems, we may modularize them. In most cases, we would need to move databases from one server to another—sometimes, even move them from Windows to Linux. Read more »
How to migrate MySQL tables to SQL Server using the SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) and SSIS April 25, 2017 by Daniel Calbimonte Introduction In this article, we will demonstrate how to migrate MySQL tables to SQL Server using the SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) and SSIS. We will give a brief introduction to MySQL and create a table. If you do not have any experience in MySQL, this tutorial will teach you your first steps. After that, we will migrate the created table and existing tables. We will also mention common problems when we migrate tables. Read more »
How to work with filegroups in SQL Server and migrate data between them March 8, 2017 by Kaloyan Kosev As you may already have figured out, the default settings in SQL Server are not always the best. Such is the case when you are working with new user databases; usually you get a single data (*.mdf) and transaction log (*.ldf) file. The data file resides within the PRIMARY file group; the only one we have so far, and it will store all of our databases objects, system objects, user tables, user stored procedures and all other objects. In some cases this default configuration may be good enough for you, but let us cover why would you prefer a different configuration in your production environment. Read more »
How to install, configure and use SQL Server Distributed Replay February 1, 2017 by Vitor Montalvão Introduction The Microsoft SQL Server Distributed Replay feature has been provided by Microsoft since SQL Server 2012 and it is used to replay captured traces against an upgraded test environment. Read more »
Microsoft SQL Server Non-Contained Object Migration Deployment Procedure using Powershell January 12, 2017 by Musab Umair As DBAs, we all face a lot of challenges while performing the migration of SQL Server databases from one server to another or even the whole servers at some times. The Database Migration process is not always a simple Backup and Restore process so we might need a huge amount of effort if we have to migrate objects which are not included in the native backups for a specified database, these objects are called Non-Contained Objects. Read more »
SQL Server database migration best practices for low risk and downtime December 27, 2016 by Mustafa EL-Masry Introduction The main goal of many organizations, today, is reducing costs while maintaining the highest degree of stability and efficiency. To this end, we should think out of the box about how we can help to achieve this as DBAs. The approaches include: Read more »
Using SSMA v7.1 for Oracle to migrate into SQL Server December 21, 2016 by Vitor Montalvão Introduction This is a second article that is a continuation of the Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) v7.1 for Oracle. In my first article I wrote an overview about the tool and how to install it. In this second article I will write about how to use it to migrate data and objects from an Oracle database to a SQL Server database. Read more »
Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) v7.1 for Oracle December 12, 2016 by Vitor Montalvão Introduction SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) is a free supported tool from Microsoft that simplifies and automates database migration processes (assessment analysis, necessary conversions, data migration and tests) from Microsoft Access, MySQL, Oracle, Sybase and DB2 to SQL Server, Azure SQL DB and SQL Server vNext (at the time I’m writing this article, SQL Server vNext stills in CTP1 version, so being a technical preview version it should not be used for production migrations). Read more »
How to migrate an on premise SQL Server database to Azure September 27, 2016 by Kaloyan Kosev Lately, database administrators often hear the question “have you tried Azure?“ or “can we use Azure for some of our databases?“. For me it was hard to answer these questions at first, but after a while I got to know what is really important behind these situations. In fact, what really matters is assessing the current environment, calculating the most suitable pricing tier and preparing a smooth migration. Read more »
SQL Server stretch databases – Moving your “cold” data to the Cloud August 18, 2016 by Miroslav Dimitrov Tons of new and exciting features have been introduced with the release of the latest SQL Server 2016. It simply is faster, better and more reliable! 🙂 As with the last several releases, there are again a lot of improvements with regards to the integration between on-premises databases and databases sitting into the Cloud. The ultimate goal is to have as convenient and easy as possible migration of the data in both directions. Today’s focus will be one of those features: Stretched Databases. Fasten your seatbelts and discover what is beneath this term! Read more »
How to migrate users to a partially contained database in SQL Server June 13, 2016 by Ashish Kumar Mehta Introduction Microsoft introduced the Contained Database feature in SQL Server 2012. In this article we will take a look at how to migrate SQL Server Logins to a partially contained database in SQL Server to remove dependencies from the Instance of SQL Server where Contained Database resides. Read more »
How to copy tables from one database to another in SQL Server April 29, 2016 by Ahmad Yaseen In some cases, as a DBA, you are requested to copy the schema and the content of specific tables from a database to another one in the same instance or in a different SQL instance, such as copying specific tables from a production database to a DEV one for testing or troubleshooting purposes. SQL Server offers a lot of methods that can be used to perform table’s data and schema copy process. In order to go through each one of these methods, we will consider the below scenario: The hosting SQL Server: localhost. Both databases hosted in the same SQL Server 2017 instance The source database: AdventureWorks2018 The destination database: SQLShackDemo Read more »
In-Memory OLTP Series – Data migration guideline process on SQL Server 2016 January 29, 2016 by Luan Moreno M. Maciel On the last article about the best modes to move the disk-based tables to using the In-Memory feature we covered all the aspects and styles available on SQL Server 2014. Continuing on the migration process now we’re going to look at some of the new enhancements of makes SQL Server 2016 Read more »
In-Memory OLTP Series – Data migration guideline process on SQL Server 2014 January 28, 2016 by Luan Moreno M. Maciel In this article we will review migration from disk-based tables to in-memory optimized tables. This article assumes that you already understand the pros and cons about In-Memory Technology, for more articles about this, please refer here. There are some options available on SQL Server 2014 and SQL Server 2016 that will help you to identity, discover and track the tables and stored procedures that can be good candidates to be ported to memory. Furthermore it’s possible to check if the table meets to all the pre-requisites established. Here is the list of the features that we will take a look into. Read more »
