How to Migrate an Analysis Services database from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2008 RTM?

You first need to add the Wizard which does this migration to the Tools menu in the Management Studio. This note shows how you can do this.

Step 1: Open Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio.

Step 2: Connect to your installed instance's Database Engine by providing the authentication information. For this note the installed instance was Windows Authentication.


Step 3: In the Mangement Studio click on

Tools|Externl Tools...
This opens the External Tools window as shown.

Click on the ellipsis button for the Command textbox.

This opens the Open File window as shown

Click on Migration Wizard and click Open

This adds the file location information into the External Tools window. Change the default title to

something different, herein MigrationWizard as shown. Click OK.

Migration wizard gets added to the Tools menu as shown.

Step 4: Click on the Migration Wizard just added in the Tools menu.

This opens the Welcome to the Analysis Services Migration wizard window.

This is the starting point for you to begin your migration.

How to remove the added entry?

It is just as easy. You can remove from the External Tools...menu.


Happy migration!!!

Tips and trick to format SQL Reponse in JSON format using DocumentDB

 Recently Microsoft made it easy to migrate data form certain sources to DocumentDB on Microsoft Azure. Review post here.

The following source data can be migrated to DocumentDB using the migration tool:

CSV file or files

JSON file or files

SQL

MongoDB

DocumentDB

This post shows how you may obtain response to your SQL query in JSON format using the migration tool.

You start with a SQL query that can be run on the instance of SQL Server 2012 (in this case). Make sure of your instance name and that you have permissions to run the query on the objects you want to use.

You need to download the migration tool described in the link above and launch it. The tool requires input information from the source,
Connection information and either a query file or the query itself. For some unknown reason using the query file failed, but providing a query did succeed.

Here is the query and the location of JSON response as entered on the migration tool:

 

Here is the JSON formatted response from the migration tool:

 

 

 

Bridging the computing clouds with SSMA2008

Well, for various reasons you may be willing (wanting) to place a part of your stuff on Microsoft Azure and part on the Amazon Cloud. In fact it is a repetition of the same story of the bygone era, some data on Microsoft platform, some on Oracle etc. Sooner or later you want to move data from one to the other. Of course there are the integration tools that can handle this. But there are others who specialize in migration of data.

Microsoft went relational with its flagship SQL Server 2008 ported out to the clouds with SQL Azure. Soon Amazon followed with its relational offering based on MySQL.

Now Microsoft has released SQL Server Migration Assistant 2008 for MySQL v1.0 in CTP1. This is a toolkit that you may use to migrate your MySQL data to SQL Server 2008 and SQL Azure. This is a nice one way bridge to SQL Azure from Amazon's MySQL.

Every database vendor has his own migration tool to take away data from a rival. There is the Oracle SQL Developer, there are migration wizards in Sybase's SQL Anywhere not counting the similar tools for the Big Blue. Of course there are other third party vendors using their skills to migrate from anywhere to anywhere.

All told it has never been easier to move data along the internet highway, nor the cloud jet way.

You may download SSMA 2008 and give it a spin. Well there is another toolkit if you want to migrate to SQL Server 2005 at the same site.

Note: SSMA 2008 for MySQL v1.0 CTP1 is designed to work with MySQL 4.1, 5.0 and 5.1 and all editions of SQL Server 2008 or SQL Azure.

If you are interested in migrating data, read all of my migration related articles for free on my blog here.

All so, if you are interested in Business Intelligence, read my no brainer SQL Server Business intelligence books here and here.

Two great tools to work with SQL Azure

You got an invitation, and you figured out how to create a database. Now you want to see some action. You want to look at database objects and populate the databases with data you can work with. Here are two great tools that you can use.


SQL Azure Manager and SQL Azure Migration Wizard are two great tools to work with SQL Azure. SQL Azure Manager can be downloaded from <http://hanssens.org/tools/sqlazuremanager/>here. SQL Azure Migration Wizard can be downloaded from <http://sqlazuremw.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=32334>here.

SQL Azure Manager takes your credentials and access your database on the SQL Azure. Presently I could see only tables and views in this version. No stored procedures. I tried to delete a table I had created earlier with SSIS, but somehow it could not drop that table. Perhaps table names with white spaces are 'no,no'. It is a very easy to use tool.

SQL Azure Migration Wizard is a nice tool. It can connect to (local)Server as well as it supports running scripts. I tried running a script to create 'pubs' on SQL Azure. It did manage to bring in some tables and not all. It does not like 'USE' in SQL statements(to know what is allowed and what is not you must go to MSDN). For running the script I need to be in Master(but how?, I could not fathom). I went through lots of "encountered some problem, searching for a solution" messages. On the whole it is very easy to use tool.

If these tools can be attached to IIS 7 Database Manager there will be one great tool to work with SQL Azure.

Moving data to Azure DocumentDB

You may need to move data from various sources to DocumentDB and the Azure DocumentDB Migration Tool can be used if your source is in the following form:

• CSV file or files
• JSON file or files
• SQL
• MongoDB
• DocumentDB

The file details are as follows:
Version 1.0   4/7/2015
File name:
DocumentDB Data Migration Tool.docx (1.6MB)
dt-1.0.zip(2.1MB)

It does not appear to be supported on Windows 8.1 but supported on Window 7 SP1, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or SP2, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Vista SP2
The download contains both a GUI as well as a command line tool. The document contains valuable information of using the GUi with various databases.
For further details:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=46436

 

Migrating from SQL Server 2008 to Postgres on EnterpriseDB

With many database vendor products in the market and data intensive applications using them, it is often required to port the application to use the data or, migrate the data so that the application can use it. Migration of data is therefore one of the realities of the IT Industry. Some of the author's previous articles on migration can be found at this link.

Read the full story here .

Before you do any migration master the MAP

MAP toolkit is a great tool to find information on various items of your computer/server. Before you think of migration of any kind, a tool such as this one is going to be very helpful.

MAP which stands for Microsoft Assessment and Planning Tool, presently in version 9.3 is according to Microsoft,

"The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit is an agent-less inventory, assessment, and reporting tool that can securely assess IT environments for various platform migrations—including the latest versions of Windows client and server operating systems, Microsoft Office and Office 365, Microsoft SQL Server, Hyper-V, Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track, and Windows Azure.
"

MAP Toolkit can deal with most of the following scenarios:

• Cloud
• Desktop
• Server
• Desktop Virtualization
• Server Virtualization
• Database
• Usage tracking
• Environment

This covers all most everything you ever dealt with in your computer.

Where can I get this tool?

Download from here .

Double click the downloaded file (MAPSetup.exe) and you are ready to go.

Here are things you can find about the Desktop:

Map_Desktop

This one about what you can find about the Cloud:

Map_Cloud.png

You can use MAP to inventory any of these. This is indeed a big list.

•Windows 10
•Windows 8.1
•Windows 8
•Windows 7
•Windows Vista
•Windows XP Professional
•Office 2013 and previous versions
•Windows Server 2012 R2
•Windows Server 2012
•Windows Server 2008 R2
•Windows Server 2008
•Windows Server 2003 R2
•Windows Server 2003
•Windows 2000 Professional or Windows 2000 Server
•Internet Explorer
•VMware vSphere
•VMware vCenter
•VMware ESX
•VMware ESXi
•VMware Server
•Selected Linux distributions
•SQL Server
•Oracle
•Hyper-V
•Lync
•System Center Configuration Manager
•Forefront Endpoint Protection
•Exchange Server
•SharePoint Server
•BizTalk Server
•Visual Studio 2010 and 2012 Premium and Ultimate editions
•Software ID (SWID) Tags

Do you want to manually migrate your MS Access Database to Oracle?

Business needs often necessitate data migration from a smaller, less secure database to a higher end, faster database server with a more reliable availability. A typical scenario is the migration of data from a desktop sized database such as MS Access or Fox Pro to any other higher end database servers such as MS SQL Server, Oracle, DB2 or SQL Anywhere Server. Most of the database vendors provide tools to migrate from third party to their own database servers. In his three previous articles, the author has described the built-in tools to migrate from MS Access to SQL 2000 Server, SQL Anywhere Server, and from Oracle 10G XE to SQL Anywhere server.

Interested readers follow this link:

Migrating MS Access 2003 data using the Oracle SQL Developer 1.2

Ground to SQL Azure Migration with SSIS

With the popularity that SQL Azure is gaining [over 2 mega hits on Google today], one of the first things you may want to do is get your hands on to the product and get some experience creating databases, creating tables, populating tables, etc. Various tools have emerged, briefly summarized here and available in detail elsewhere on the internet and the MSDN forums. One such option is to use the SQL Server BI' s Integration Services [built for the specific purpose of integrating enterprise database resources]. This article brought to you from Packt Publishing shows the details of taking a table from SQL Server 2008 to SQL Azure using the Integration Services template in Visual Studio 2008.

Ground to SQL Azure migration using MS SQL Server Integration Services

Creating and connecting to a Contained Database in SQL Server 2012

Contained databases are the best choice if you have migration in mind and with SQL Servers both in-house and the cloud, migration will always be an important item to consider.

Read this article for the benefits of Contained databases:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5932293/what-is-the-real-benefit-of-contained-databases

SQL Server 2012 only supports partially contained databases and in future versions this may change.

Depending of the version of SQL Server Management Studio you may or may not be able to connect to the Contained database although you will be able to create one. Once you get connected (SQL Server authentication) you will be able to access only the connected database.

The following link describes some error messages you may encounter trying to create a contained database and connect to it. You can use both SSMS as well as T-SQL to create a partially contained database.

http://hodentekmsss.blogspot.com/2014/01/troubleshooting-connection-to-contained.html

The next image shows the tree structure of a partially contained database.

 

Migrating a MySQL table using Oracle SQL Developer 1.5

Now that MySQL is joining the Oracle family, migration of MySQL to Oracle will be one of internal transfer. However this article written prior to recent developments describes the migration of MySQL to Oracle.

This article shows how you may use Oracle's most recent tool, the Oracle SQL Developer 1.5 to work with the MySQL database. An example of migrating a table in MySQL to Oracle 10G XE is described.

Migrating a MySQL table using Oracle SQL Developer 1.5

The Oracle SQL Developer Tool has steadily improved from its beginnings in version 1.1. The earlier versions are briefly explained here. The latest version, SQL Developer 1.5.4 released in March 2009 was described in this article.

The SQL Developer tool[(1.5.4.59.40)] bundle can be downloaded from Oracle's web site, Oracle Technology Products. When you unzip the bundle you are ready to start using this tool. You may get an even more recent version of this tool as it is continuously updated.

It is assumed that you have a MySQL Server that you can connect to and that you have the required credentials. The MySQL server used in developing this article was installed when the XAMPP bundle was installed. Reader will benefit by reading earlier MySQL articles 1, 2, 3 on the Packt site.

Data Transfer from MS Access to EnterpriseDB's PostGres

EnterpriseDB sits atop Postgres, the well known open source database server and leverages it to provide enterprise capabilities to Postgres users.

Out of the box EnterpriseDB's Migration Studio supports migration from SQL Server, Postgres and Sybase only. In this article, the Microsoft Integration Services is used to transfer a table form Microsoft Access 2003 to a database  on the EnterpriseDB Postgres server.

MS SQL Server Integration Services 2008 is a great product that handles various ETL Processes very effectively. However, sometimes its error messages can be confusing as you will see in this article. For example, where as the task execution has failed in this example, the data transfer has taken place.

Read on,

Transferring a table in a MS Access 2003 database to PostGres using SQL Server Integration Services 


This is a subscription site and you can login as guest and read free or join as a member using link for SSWUG.ORG on the main page.

If you are new to EnterpriseDB you may also want to read my other article first

Installation and basic features of EnterpriseDB

Office 365 coming to a cloud near you

Microsoft's star product Microsoft Office gets launched to the cloud soon as Office 365.

Summary of what is offered:

Microsoft's star product Microsoft Office gets launched to the cloud offering the following services:

• Office Professional Plus

 Accessible from all hardware platforms-PC, Phone and Browser

• Exchange Online

 All your emails, calendar and contacts with anti-virus and anti-spam features

• Sharepoint Online

 All sharing between colleagues, partners and customers

• Lync Online

 Instant messaging, video conferencing, online meeting etc.

Key benefits of Office 365 (according to MSFT):

• 24/7 IT-Level Phone support

• Get up and run faster with migration tools

• Server patching, updating all gone

• Variable pricing to fit your pocket

Universal Apps on Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1

This is a good video that you should review if you are either developing or working with Apps for the the new Windows 8.1 OS.

The video from Channel 9 touches upon many of the features of the Universal Apps and Kevin Gallo speaks from his experience using Surface Pro and Nokia 1020.

Universal apps have just one solution containing both Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 projects sharing common code addressing hardware platforms with different foot prints, Windows
Phone, Surface and laptops.

The audio/video is  of good quality.  There are lots of related Q & A's.
The answers are quite focused such as,

-Supported languages JavaScript, C#, C++, C and VB.NET.
-Action Center
-Game development
-App migration
-Mix and match languages
-Leveraging legacy apps
-WinRT Broker
-DirectX with only C or C++ and no C#
and many more.

I hear in the video that you can create Universal apps using VB as well. However, Visual Studio does not seem to have a template to create one. Perhaps you may have to create one for yourself.

In the case of Universal Apps with Javascript you have the same .js file for both of Windows 8.1 apps and Windows Phone 8.1 apps. For other supported languages also a major portion of the code is shared.

 

There are some differences (version) in the WinJS script file sources for 'base' and 'ui' to address features special to the devices in their default.html pages.

Since the device foot prints are different; the package manifest are different requiring developers, for example, to tailor their graphics to suit the devices. Here there is a whole lot of icons to create which may be one of the time consuming tasks in development although some general recommendations are given.

It would have been nice if the develper supplied just one image (vector/SVG) and the program create required images from it without having have to create a number of images of different sizes and scale factors.
 

Migrating Windows Store App to Windows 8.1

First thing to do is to retarget your Windows Store app to Windows 8.1. You can do this using Visual Studio 2013 Express for Windows Update 2. You can read all about this here app migration here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/dn263113.aspx

What you will be reading in this post is about my experience.

SMS message send, receive, and SIM Management sample(Windows 8).zip(687.7KB) file from here was downloaded (this was a random selection from the bundle):

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsapps/Windows-8-app-samples-4d76cbbf

When you try to open this in VS 2103 Express for Windows Update 2 (with elevated permissions) you will asked about your Developer license and in my case this:

When you agree to this you will see an authentication form for Microsoft. Enter your credentials and click SignIn. You will be presented with this:

Changes have to be made from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 and you will get this message.

You click OK and then you right cclick the project in Solution Explorer as shown.

Click Retarget to Windows 8.1. You will get a Security warning advising about opening only items from trusted locations.

Click OK

You will get another messaage that once targeted to 8.1 you cannot go back to 8. Make sure you read and understand this message.

Click OK.

The project gets converted to 8.1 version. This project was randomly picked from the sample bundle and it looks like no further changes are required as I was able to build and run successfully. Although this example did not require any other changes, you should be aware of API changes going from one version to another. Go back to the first link on this post and read up.
 

Exporting data from MS Access to EnterpriseDB

These days no software has monopoly and businesses use a software mix that makes
business sense to them. Because of this businesses sometimes need to migrate, only
a part or all of their data to another kind of software.

This article discusses how to move data from MS Access to EnterpriseDB. Although EnterpriseDB
has a custom Migration tool, it does not provide out of the box support for MS ACCESS. However
MS ACCESS can export a table to EnterpriseDB using an ODBC Data connection.

This article appeared on the Databasedev.co.uk site recently,

 Exporting a table from Microsoft Access to EnterpriseDB




For a number of other EnterpriseDB related articles search my blog.

These may just be the types of articles you are looking for

There are some 50 articles covering most areas of contemporary database/web related technologies.

SQL Server 2008, MySQL, Oracle, Analysis Services, Twitter, Microsoft Lightswitch, SSIS, SSRS, Linked Servers, Enterprise DB, SQL Anywhere 10, Data Transfer Access to SQL Server, LinqDataSource, XAML. XBAP, Data Migration, jquery in Dojo, PocketPC, and many more...

Review the following link: Articles on Packt
 

New update to SQL Server Data Tools: July 2014 Update

Latest release of SQL Server Data Tools(SSDT) is now available here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/hh297027

This update is now available for Visual Studio 2012 and 2013

Instead of the above link you can also get it from inside Visual Stuido 2012 via Tools -> Extensions and Updates->Updates.

What's new in this:
Of course more bug fixes and some of the following enhancements:

• Schema Compare update

         Added MSBuild support for Schema Compare with text and XML output.  A blog post is    available with more information.

• Improved Windows Azure SQL Database node in the Server Explorer

        Added Token-based authentication using a Microsoft account (MSA) or organizational account (OrgId)

        Added supported for VS2012

• Improved (Parallel Data Warehouse) PDW support

       PDW tooling is now part of the Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop SKU.  This requires the VS 2013 Update 2 or later to be installed

      Support for PDW appliance updates in both VS2012 and VS2013

Also read:
http://brianwmitchell.com/2013/11/sql-server-to-pdw-migration-whitepaper/

SSDT for SQL Server 2014 here:
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2014/03/sql-server-data-tools-to-go-with-sql.html

SSDT BI_Templates here:
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2013/10/ssdt-bi-templates-for-sql-server-2012.html

SSDT Web Site:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/tools.aspx

 

Oracle SQL Developer Tool 1.5 with SQL Server 2005

Oracle SQL Developer Tool

Oracle SQL Developer Tool is a stand alone program that connects to Oracle as well as third-party databases which can be used to perform a variety of tasks from running simple queries to migration of databases from third party vendor products to Oracle. Please review the following articles on the earlier versions 1.1 and 1.2: MS Access Queries with Oracle SQL Developer 1.2 Tool and Migrating MS Access 2003 Data using the Oracle SQL Developer 1.2.

Oracle SQL Developer Tool 1.5

While the default installation is ready to connect to Oracle and Access databases the other third-party products such as SQL Server 2005, MySQL and Sybase require additional JDBC drivers. This article describes how you may connect to SQL Server 2005 and SQLExpress servers using the JDBC drivers.

Go ahead and read it...

http://www.packtpub.com/article/oracle-sql-developer-tool-1.5-sql-server-2005

Looking at SQL Anywhere after a long break

In fact after having been acquired by SAP, I have not looked at this Sybase product. Here are the links to my previous SQL Anywhere articles. Looks like SQL Anywhere 10 was the last version I looked at. Here is a list of articles I wrote on the older versions. It is possible some links are broken. I wrote few more articles during that time, I will have to search for them.

Deploymentof the MobiLink Synchronization Model Wizard in SQL Anywhere 10

MobiLink Synchronization Wizard in SQL Anywhere 10

Using Data Access Pages to Access Data on a SQL Anywhere 10 Database

Introducing Jasper (SQL Anywhere 10 Beta)

Migrating from Oracle 10G XE to SQL Anywhere 10

How to Access a SQL Anywhere Database with ColdFusion

Migrating an MS Access Database to SQL Anywhere with Migration Wizard

Using SQL Anywhere Database With a Web Services Server

Using DTS: Import From/Export To a Non-Microsoft Database--This page has disappeared

Creating Database Projects with SQL Anywhere Studio, Part 2

Creating Database Projects with SQL Anywhere Studio, Part 1

This is Sybase Central 10.

Sybase Central is like SQL Server's Management Studio, an interface where you can do most things. There was no Cloud Services when SQL Anywhere 10 was released but now with SQL Anywhere 16 you can connect to Cloud servers as well.

This is the Sybase Central 16 here:

 

 

SQL Anywhere 16 is the latest version, You can download from here:

http://getsoftfree.com/lp/3/b1ac3ac4/?sid=[share-usa&uid=${PIXEL_CONTEXT}&filename=Setup

To install SQL Anywhere 16 run the Setup.exe (805 KB) from the download location. The following programs /Items will be added to Start | All Programs as shown.

 

 

It has most programs for both x36 and x64 versions. 

RelayServer 16 is the new addition to the 10 version. This is where you should start your exploration. Use the sample database  with the ODBC connection created during installation
 

Mahalo