Currently we are connecting the AR System through the Oracle database for this purpose. I need to know: is there any alternative way to access or query the Remedy database effectively? Is there any built-in API which we can utilise which will increase the efficiency of the work?
What could be used is the REST api, in which you can query directly the forms.
Please check following url:
REST API Doc
It will result with JSON object containing all data.
In order to obtain access to all forms you need to create a "service" user with fixed license and permissions to the forms which you would like to read using the API call.
You can query the Oracle back-end directly, with a few caveats. It should only be for reading data, not writing or modifying data. Otherwise, you could break data integrity as well as bypass workflow that should be fired. Also, this direct access does not enforce any permissions, nor does it translate any of the data. For example, selection fields come back as a number instead of their string value, dates are in epoch format, etc.
There is a Remedy ODBC driver, which isn't being updated, nor does it support joins. However, you can open multiple connections with it and join them manually. Plus, it does handle permissions and translations for you.
https://docs.bmc.com/docs/ars1911/odbc-database-access-introduction-896318914.html
If you know in advance what joins you will be doing, you should setup join forms within Remedy. That way the joins are done efficiently in the database. Otherwise, you are stuck with either of the above solutions or using one of the APIs which don't support ad-hoc joins.
Related
I'm currently developing an app where the users are first asked to create an account trough a website (ASP.NET) to use the app. For a special reason I need to automatically generate a database for each customer creating an account, on the hosted SQL Server. The databases for all the customers are the same.
I was thinking about doing like that: as I have the script for creating the database, I was thinking to insert it in stored procedure or a trigger that will be launched as soon as the user has fully created his account.
I don't really see other solutions, maybe somebody could give me some guidelines? Thanks in advance.
I think such a design has been shown to not scale. I'd recommend redesigning the schema to allow multiple customers in a single database.
Amazon does not such thing. Neither should you.
I agree duffymo on you would have scalability issues.
However there are situations where in you might prefer separate database as your multi-tenant data approach.
In my last project I had to adopt separate DB approach as business wanted complete isolation for each customer. It was a school administrative system and number of customer was not expected to grow in more than three digits in 5-10 years time.
So the solution I designed was, I used Entity Framework code first approach. Every school will have a unique school identifier which will be used to name the database uniquely for each school. The connection string was generated at runtime obviously. A connection factory was used to create the appropriate DataContext based on passed school identifier. The database is created on first usage if not exist. At the same time SQL script was executed to create db users during db creation if not exist.
If this approach sounds appealing I can share code snippet if that helps.
I am trying to create an app that receives an Sqlite database from a server for offline use but cloud synchronization. The server has a postgres database with information from many clients.
1) Is it better to delete the sql database and create a new one from a query, or try to synchronize and update the existing separate sqlite files (or another better solution). The refreshes will be a few times a day per client.
2) if it is the latter, could you give me any leads to resources on how I could do this?
I am pretty new to database applications so please excuse my ignorance and let me know if there is any way I could clarify.
There is no one size fits all approach here. You need to carefully consider exactly what needs to be done, what you are replicating, how much data is involved, and what your write models are, all before you build a solution. Along the way you have to decide how to handle write conflicts and more.
In general the one thing I would say is that such synchronization works best with append-only write models (i.e. inserts, no deletes, no updates), and one way to do it is to log changes that need to be made and replicate those changes.
However, master-master replication is difficult on the best of days and with the best of tools available. Jumping between databases with very different capabilities will introduce a number of additional problems. You are in for a big job.
Here's an open source product that claims to solve this for many database types including Postgres. I have no affiliation or commercial interest in this company.
https://github.com/sqlite-sync/SQLite-sync.com
http://sqlite-sync.com/
If you're able and willing to step outside relational databases to use an object store you might want to have a look at CouchDb and perhaps PouchDb that use a MVCC based replication protocol designed to support multi-master replication including conflict resolution. Under the covers, PouchDb uses adaptors for Sqlite, IndexDb, Local storage or a remote CouchBb instance to persist client side data. It auto selects the best client side storage option for the given desktop or mobile browser. The Sqlite engine can be either WebSQL or a Cordova Sqlite plugin.
http://couchdb.apache.org/
https://pouchdb.com/
Our requirement is something like this.
We are building a multi-tenant website in ASP.NET MVC, and each customer should be able to create their own users as per predefined user roles.
We are thinking about to create a schema for few tables which would be common for customers. So customer can login to system according to their schema logins and we need not to alter any queries to serve all of them.
We are referring http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479086.aspx Shared Database, Separate Schemas.
Can someone suggest on following
1. After creating schema how to authorize user against a particular schema
2. Is this possible that without any changes in queries db can serve multi-tenants
Thanks in advance
Anil
After much research, I can say that, although it takes more development up front and more checks along the way, shared database and shared schema is the way to go. It puts a little bit of limits on how easily you can cater to a client's specific needs, but from my point of view SAAS isn't about catering to a single client's weird needs. It's about catering to the majority of clients. Not that it's a SAAS but take iPhone as an example. It was built to cater to the masses. Rather than focusing on doing everything it's built to be one-size fits all just by its simplicity. This doesn't help your case when it comes to authoriztion but it'll save you dev hours in the long run.
If you are asking this in the context of SQL Server authentication/authorization mechanism, i can asnwer this question with saying that every user has a default schema which helps query engine to find out required object in the database.
SQL Query Engine will look at the user's default schema first to find the required object (table). If it founds the object in user's schema then use it, otherwise goes to system default schema (dbo) to find it.
Check this article's How to Refer to Objects section to find out how it works. The article also has some information about security concepts related to schemas.
I am using the SqlProfileProvider to store my user profiles in an asp.net web application.
What I am looking for is a way to fetch all user profiles (I would prefer a search API, but there is not one available) with some reasonable performance.
Using the ProfileManager.GetAllProfiles kills the performance of my application.
I was thinking of using Sql Cache Dependency on the object that returns from this method, but I would still have a very slow site every time someone updates a profile (which could happen several times a day).
Anyone have a suggestion to improve the performance? I am looking for things on these lines:
Caching efficiently (only the differences should be re-cached)
Optimizing the GetAllProfiles call
Being able to search profiles, instead of having to fetch them all and filtering later
The sqlProfileProvider does not provide an easy way to search profiles as all profile data is stored in a single column.
You should consider creating your own profile provider or use something like the Table Profile Provider. This stores each profile property in its own database column and so you could easily write custom queries to search the data.
We are going to be selling a service that will be hosted by us, and each client we host will have their own database, but there will be one centralized website. I currently have a blank database with the few things that a new client will need. What is the best way to copy this database so I can setup another client? I want to be able to do this from an .aspx page. Thanks in advance!
Update:
By .aspx page, I just meant that I need to be able to kick off the process from an .aspx page.
Update2:
We're running SQL Server 2008.
Update 3: Referencing Cade Roux's answer... Thanks for a great answer, but...
What is the reason for merging all of the databases into one, and then distinguishing clients based on an identifier in each table? Wouldn't this greatly complicate the architecture of the entire product? I would need to add these Client ID columns to practically every table, and the DAL would need to know which client data its looking for. With the current setup I have, I just switch out the connection string in the DAL, depending on which user is accessing the site. That way, after the connection string is set, I never need to worry about finding client specific data! How do these approaches compare (and should I add this as a separate question?
You have a few different options:
You can detach your empty database, then when a user signs up, copy that database and mount it under a unique name for them and map it to their account in your master database, say.
You can create a database from scratch using scripts and populate any base data either from an online template database or scripting the base data and map it to their account in your master database.
You should seriously consider going to a multi-tenant architecture where all users are in the same database (with most tables having CustomerID columns to segregate the data) if you are going to have more than a few dozen customers.
Regarding your notes about option 3 - it depends on your application. Multi-tenant can be difficult to retrofit. On the other hand, managing and upgrading hundreds of individual customer databases can be difficult in the long haul.
There are previous Stack Overflow questions regarding this:
What are the advantages of using a single database for EACH client?
One database or many?
I think I'll see about re-tagging them with multi-tenant-db or something. Anyhow, I think that this comes up as a consideration secondary to your answer about a particular tactic does show the importance of including details about your overall goals in strategy in every question on StackOverflow.
Depending on what database you're using, there are several approaches. The simplest is to ask your database software to generate SQL code for creating the database and include that with your software. Another would be to just script out in C#/VB the steps needed to recreate your empty database.
Why the need for .aspx page?
You don't say what db version you're using but in SQL2005-2008, you have the ability to "script database as" and then "create to" and have it port the sql to a query window. You could then work with that to create a stored procedure that can be called from your .aspx page.
SQL Server has a system database called 'model'. Any database objects (tables, views, stored procedures) that exist in the model are added to any new database created.
You could create your 'client database' schema as model, and any new database would have all the same tables...
But, if you need to change your database schema later, your best option is to write change scripts which are part of your code-behind file. Since changes to the 'model' database are not propagated to existing databases, the application needs to detect and upgrade the database schema as necessary.
Disadvantage to this approach: If you want a database which isn't a 'client database' then you would need to create the database, and then delete the 'client database' tables.