Unfortunately, unless you invest in some tools for rolling back changes
as well as some form of replication, I don't see how this could be
workable.
And when I say rolling back changes, I'm not just talking about data
changes. How about DDL changes (changed data type, new column, &c)?
And finally, is there any reason that a dev environment needs a
semi-daily update to keep it in sync with the live data? I've been in
several places with Dev data from live, and an update either on demand
or once / week has sufficed.
Now, to prove my first statement incorrect, allow me to provide a method
that doesn't need advanced tools. Instead, it throws hardware and code
at the issue. *(I hate it when someone corrects me, even if it's me
;-)*
If you have two or more SQL Servers, you can have one being updated
while the other(s) are in use, and swap servers on a schedule or on
command by changing a value in a control table that specifies the source
Server to connect to. To make this feasable, you would need to use log
backups and have a fairly automated method for applying those backups to
to the dev servers in a rapid manner. This is very similar to a method
I used to update a SQL Server DB behind a website, where the original
data came from non-SQL Server sources, and an application was needed to
update the data every evening. To ensure consistent data on the
website, the data was updated to two SQL Servers alternately, and
changing a value in a config table changed which DB the website used.
==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==
Brendt W. Hess
Database Administrator, Motosport, Inc
brendt.[Email address protected]
==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==+==
-----Original Message-----
From: Mirabella Derek
[mailto:mssqldba-ezmlmshield-x22244433.[Email address protected]
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2007 10:00 AM
To: LazyDBA Discussion
Subject: Live DEV Site via log shipping, replication, mirroringHi guys
I am looking into taking some of our live production databases from our
datacenters and bringing them local, so I can use them as a dev db.
Now all the tools tht I have seen whether it be log shipping or
replication, restore the dbs in stand by mode. Which is more for a
disaster recovery model.
I am not looking to do DR, I want the dbs to be accessible to our
developers to make changes. And I think that's where the problem comes
in. If you use log shipping then once the db gets changed, it will be
out of sync with the prod db, and therefore a new production db will
need to be restored prior to restoring another log.
I am not looking for up to the minute data for our developers, I would
be able to probably take semi daily, one in the afternoon and one at
night
Does anyone know of any third party tools that would allow me to get
this done, or know of a way I could somehow use replication or log
shipping? Or any other native sql method?
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