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SQL Server Database Snapshots: Are They Right for Me?
In this webcast, sponsored by Quest Software, SQL Server expert Tom LaRock will discuss SQL Server database snapshots and how you can implement them in your environment. He will outline the advantages and limitations of using these snapshots and investigate common use cases where they can successfully be deployed.
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> Live date: 9/9/2008
Access and SQL Server
Send in your thoughts and experiences here – why/how do you use SQL Server and Access… or do you?
Stewart: "As an example of the sort of application that can beneficially be developed on this sort of mixed structure, we are considering developing a drawing register database to keep track of all the drawing development histories on major civil engineering projects. These will typically have several thousand drawings, developed across several offices of this practice (and possibly sub-consultants) and going through many generations of revisions as the final design is arrived at. In order to get the basic tools to work, this is starting in Access on one project in one office, but with the database links written in SQL. Once all is working OK, we will start rolling it out on multiple projects across our 13,000 staff across 104 countries…using SQL Server as a pan-practice platform.
I accept that the same thing could be done by VB & Crystal Reports, but that would lack the advantage of prototyping and incremental development."
Ben: "To take a step “back” further in the toolset, my previous two employers used Excel as their “database” of choice because it is where their skill sets were in the accounting department.
The former of the two was a small financial services company that kept all commission information on a 40MB+ Excel spreadsheet. The commission reports and weekly newsletter were just formatted sheets of this workbook. IT was getting close to getting the president to trust his chosen commission application, but the app was really pretty bad (and running an Access back end) that we had a hard time trusting it too.
The latter employer runs their entire accounting department on linked Excel spreadsheets. They have this massive macro that talks to tens of separate spreadsheets to model budget forecasts. It is so error prone that last year, they found a million dollar disparity in the budget that was due to this bloated system. One person in accounting told me it was so bad that sometimes they’d run the model twice, changing nothing, and they would get different numbers. Yes, they have the SAP accounting module, but apparently the business was so “special” that they had to customize the heck out of it and ended up crippling it so badly that they chose to continue using the Excel system, which doesn’t really work anyways. Needless to say, I’ve chosen other employment.
My current employer uses Access quite a bit, combining some Access tables with linked SQL Server tables for production scheduling. The only problems we had with this is those office workers tying up our production SQL Server with bad queries and causing problems with production. We now are using replication and only allowing them to run their stuff off that secondary server which has greatly helped.
Office workers don’t know Structured Query Language nor are they aware of the tools SQL Server has available for them. When they go to class to learn Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access, they don’t mention Reporting Services, Analysis Services, stored procedures, VB, or any other tools available to work with their data. Excel and Access are the tools they know and they are going to use them. In a perfect world, IT would know about everything every department needs in terms of data and could help them use the best tools to apply the best solution. In the real world, office workers are going to use the tools they know (Excel and Access) to get their jobs done without talking to IT. Therefore, you are going to have to deal with these homegrown solutions. I’m not saying Excel and Access don’t have their place in the database environment – they do! – but much more often they are used in solutions that would be better solved with other tools, most likely from the developer’s tool bin."
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