[dba-SQLServer] Moving tables back and forth between databases

Michael Maddison michael at ddisolutions.com.au
Mon Nov 8 23:53:55 CST 2004


John,

I'm not sure EM or DTS will do a transfer with indexes.  I'm pretty sure
it wont actually.
I think you will have to script the create indexes manually.  What I'd
do is create a script
for each server, (QA will do most of the work for you)
create table
go
append data
go
alter table  (constraints)
go
create index
go

Then run it from the target server, that way it wont affect your main
server too much.

I hope your getting paid the big bucks because If you think you've had
troubles before I
think the fun is just about to begin ;-)))

I read your other posts as well and I'm not sure if my comments will be
all that helpful as
I suspect you'll need a fair amount of trial and error anyway to see
what works best for 
the environment you have to work with...  

However, I'm nervous about you normalising the big table.  I predict you
will only end up
hampering performance.  Joins on large table or many joins take a
considerable amount of time.
If you need to create separate files for space reasons have a look at
Partitioned Views in BOL.
This will allow you to split the table over multiple drives and multple
servers.  

I'd also seriously try and coerce the client into taking an OLAP
approach, though this also has its
drawbacks as there are so many damn columns.  A cube with 600 dimensions
would never
finish processing so maybe not :-)))   Just how dynamic do the queries
have to be?

cheers

Michael M




Can SQL Server EM copy tables from a database in one SQL Server (Neo2)
to another SQL Server (Neo1)?  I am trying to tear down the big 64
million record 640 field table into sub-tables.  The process consists of
creating the tables, building an append query to copy the data from the
big table to the new sub-table, then creating indexes on every field in
the sub-table.
The process of creating the new tables is relatively easy and quick,
manually copying the field defs into the paste buffer, then pasting them
back in to a new table.  The process of creating and executing the
append query is relatively painless and fairly quick though it does take
a couple of hours (I think, never actually timed it) to copy the data.
However the process of creating the indexes is time consuming both in
the doing (manually in table design view) and particularly in the
execution (saving the table with the new indexes - which can take
overnight.  The process of creating the indexes pretty much locks up the
machine (80-100% CPU
utilization) for many many hours.

I would like to create the sub-tables all at once, then farm out the
index creation to my other machines, but in order to do that I have to
copy the data filled tables to another machine, switch to that machine,
create the indexes in design view, then save the table in design view
which starts the index creation process happening.  

I have no idea whether it is even possible to do this "table copy", but
all indexes need to copy as well at least when I copy them back to the
main SQL Server.

On another note, how do I split the database into more files?  I built
it originally in 4 files, and then as I finished the import I shrank
them down into two files (on two physical 250g disks).  I am now pushing
the size up such that I need to split them back out to at least one more
250g disk (one more file), and perhaps even two.  I haven't discovered
how to split the database into more physical files.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com 

Contribute your unused CPU cycles to a good cause:
http://folding.stanford.edu/


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