Creation of reporting database

[Jonathan]

We have a production database, but due to the crippling load of some
reporting tools, we are looking to have a separate reporting database.
Due to it's nature, the reporting database doesn't need to be as up
to date as the master, perhaps it could be refreshed every evening?

What I wish to know is the best way to go about this. Replicating a
whole database seems excessive as there are 7000+ tables and we don't
need it so closely matching the production database. Log shipping
also seems out as we need the reporting database to be highly
available and if we keep applying transaction logs ever 15 minutes or
so, we need to kick all the users out.

Is there a way of scripting or automatically getting SQL Server 2k to
copy over the last full backup it did and apply this to another
server? Also if we used this method, what would happen to the users
stored in the database? Would I have to keep re-adding them after the
upgrade?

Is there a better way to tackle this problem? All help gratefully
received. We are running SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition on a
Windows 2000 Server machine.

Thanks.

[Uri Dimant]

Jonathan

http://support.microsoft.com/default...n-us;Q314546#9 ----- Move
Databases between computers running by sql server



"Jonathan" <ni**********@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:9d**************************@posting.google.c om...

We have a production database, but due to the crippling load of some
reporting tools, we are looking to have a separate reporting database.
Due to it's nature, the reporting database doesn't need to be as up
to date as the master, perhaps it could be refreshed every evening?

What I wish to know is the best way to go about this. Replicating a
whole database seems excessive as there are 7000+ tables and we don't
need it so closely matching the production database. Log shipping
also seems out as we need the reporting database to be highly
available and if we keep applying transaction logs ever 15 minutes or
so, we need to kick all the users out.

Is there a way of scripting or automatically getting SQL Server 2k to
copy over the last full backup it did and apply this to another
server? Also if we used this method, what would happen to the users
stored in the database? Would I have to keep re-adding them after the
upgrade?

Is there a better way to tackle this problem? All help gratefully
received. We are running SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition on a
Windows 2000 Server machine.

Thanks.

[Allan Mitchell]

Personally I would

1. Identify the tables that you need to report on.
2. Take them over to the reporting server
3. Create triggers on your Source tables and have them capture the data
that is entered, updated or deleted in those tables to a seperate table.
4. Build a DTS package that is fired by the SQL Server Agent every night
that will pick up those changes and migrate them to your reporting server.

This means that you are only taking across the things you need to. Using
the backup and restore method is easy but you will need to possibly unorphan
logins and also even if nothing changes during the day you are still going
to take across the whole database whereas in the other method you wouldn't.

Just my £0.02

--

----------------------------
Allan Mitchell (Microsoft SQL Server MVP)
MCSE,MCDBA
www.SQLDTS.com
I support PASS - the definitive, global community
for SQL Server professionals - http://www.sqlpass.org

"Jonathan" <ni**********@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:9d**************************@posting.google.c om...

We have a production database, but due to the crippling load of some
reporting tools, we are looking to have a separate reporting database.
Due to it's nature, the reporting database doesn't need to be as up
to date as the master, perhaps it could be refreshed every evening?

What I wish to know is the best way to go about this. Replicating a
whole database seems excessive as there are 7000+ tables and we don't
need it so closely matching the production database. Log shipping
also seems out as we need the reporting database to be highly
available and if we keep applying transaction logs ever 15 minutes or
so, we need to kick all the users out.

Is there a way of scripting or automatically getting SQL Server 2k to
copy over the last full backup it did and apply this to another
server? Also if we used this method, what would happen to the users
stored in the database? Would I have to keep re-adding them after the
upgrade?

Is there a better way to tackle this problem? All help gratefully
received. We are running SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition on a
Windows 2000 Server machine.

Thanks.

[Erland Sommarskog]

Jonathan (ni**********@yahoo.co.uk) writes:

We have a production database, but due to the crippling load of some
reporting tools, we are looking to have a separate reporting database.
Due to it's nature, the reporting database doesn't need to be as up
to date as the master, perhaps it could be refreshed every evening?

What I wish to know is the best way to go about this. Replicating a
whole database seems excessive as there are 7000+ tables and we don't
need it so closely matching the production database. Log shipping
also seems out as we need the reporting database to be highly
available and if we keep applying transaction logs ever 15 minutes or
so, we need to kick all the users out.
If you only need a daily refresh, there is no reason to apply logs
every 15 minutes. Once a day would do.

Of course with that low frequency, moving the entire database may
be a more palatable task. As Allan pointed out, you need to fix
users and login each time then, whereas with log shipping you would
only need to cater for new users.
Is there a way of scripting or automatically getting SQL Server 2k to
copy over the last full backup it did and apply this to another
server?

Yes, you use the RESTORE and BACKUP commands. Read about them in Books
Online. And then you need to use some COPY command in the command-line
world to copy the backup file as it is not adviceable to backup or
restore from a network device. All this can be handled in a job from
SQL Agent.

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, so****@algonet.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinf...2000/books.asp