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.

HTML Image element in VS 2010 Beta2

I was trying to set the source of an image in its peoperties window in
VS2010 Beta 2. I could not find the element in its properties window.
All I could see were two entries HTML and Document(see graphics).
In VS2008 you could find the location of the source element in the
HTML source page by just placing a space after src= (an elipsis button would pop-up),
but in VS 2010 Beta 2 this does not happen either. I am sure these will
be fixed in the final release.

VS2010 Beta 2

VS2008 SP1

Bean counters to the clouds.

QuickBooks is well known among small businesses used in managing their finances. Microsoft and Intuit are targetting small businesses by integrating their Cloud Platforms. Microsoft will offer its Cloud Platform Windows Azure SDK so that developers can author applications to run Intuit's financial software. Intuit has named 'Windows Azure" as its "preferred platform" for applications developed on the Intuit Partner Platform.


No friends, no enemies, only eternal interests ($$$$).

Read the full stories:
Visual Studio Magazine
Seattle Times

Visit the Intuit Partner site here.

Look out in February for the V1.0 release(from IPP Site):
"Windows Azure SDK for IPP is currently available as an open beta, with a V1.0 release expected to be available in February 2010"

New Data Visualization options in Report Builder 3.0

In my book 'Learning SQL Server Reporting Services 2008' I dealt mostly with reports that can be authored using Report Buidler 2.0.

A complete chapter from the book on Report Builder 2.0 is freely available at the two following links:

Learning SQL Server Reporting Services 2009 - Part 1

Learning SQL Server Reporting Services 2009 - Part 2

Together with SQL Server 2008 R2 Nov-CTP Microsoft released a new Report Builder, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP Report Builder 3.0 which is available as a standalone download from this location.
It can be installed using either wizards or from the commandline. You could also choose to configure it to work with a report server in native mode, or with a report server running in integrated Sharepoint mode.

I took a first look at it installing in native mode to my SQL Server 2008 R2 NoV-CTP Hodentek3\Kumori. When I open the Report Builder 3's UI, I see a number of data visualization options that were not available in Report Builder 2.0.

Here is a screen shot of the UI with the new items. In addition to Charts and Gauges, there are several other interesting options.

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.

It was yet another good year

The hodentek blog had more visitors than last year, approximating about 45,000 visitors for the year. The number of monthly visitors surged during the later half of the year. Of course this did not translate to any income from the blog. I am yet to see my first $100 cheque from Google. May be I should shift to Bing.

Trend-wise IE has lost some ground since I last looked at it. IE, Mozilla and Google Chrome lead the pack. The graph is from Google Analytics.

Some visitors keep coming to my site, still it is only 15% of the visits. I hope this will improve so that I can establish some reputation(!).

I was fortunate enough to write another book that got published in 2009. I thank Packt Publishing for their continued interest in what I write. This time I got in the right time to write (during the CTP period). It was a pain in the neck to write during this fluid period, but perhaps it has a more rounded get up. The book got bloated a little bit. Considering that the major portion of the book consists of screen shots, I hope the readers do not feel the book heavy on their hands. I am sure the book will be helpful and let the readers be the judge.

I continued writing articles on whatever that I thought would be useful. I added many other online sites to which I send in my articles and get them published, notably SSWUG.org, Dotnetslackers.com, Eggheadcafe.com and several others. This is in addition to others that I have been writing to, PacktPub.com, Sys-con.com, etc. I would like to thank the sites for promoting my articles.

Most of all I thank the readers of my books and articles. I am also thankful to the MSDN forums which have enriched my knowledgebase. I wish them all a very Happy New Year.

Firewall IP address setting in SQL Azure

SQL Azure Portal can be used for setting IP address(s) that are allowed to access SQL Azure databases. The portal comes up with a suggestion for the IP address from where the user is trying to set up the allowed address. This may not be the correct IP address setting(??????) as I found out trying to connect to SQL Azure from an overseas location different from the usual location that I normally use.


Here is the tip:
Probably the correct address that you should set may be obtained by trying to connect to a SQL Azure database from SSMS. If the IP address is not correct, then a error message will be returned indicating that you cannot access the SQL Azure database from such and such an IP address. The IP address in the error message is the one that should be used for firewall setting in the SQL Azure Portal.