Rename a table? - amazon-dynamodb

I have a DynamoDB table called Transactions in which I am recording an audit trail of activity in my app. After midnight I would like to rename the table to something like Transactions.2015-10-01 and create a new table called Transactions, to which I would record the next 24 hours of activity in my app. At the end of that period I would rename that to Transactions.2015-10-02 etc.
In other words, I'm trying to implement a rotating log of activity (though linear rather than circular).
I'm not sure there's a way to rename a table in DynamoDB. Is there a way? If not, is there another approach? For example, if there was a table pointer that was called Transactions that would point to Transactions.2015-10-01 and then at midnight that pointer would switch to to Transactions.2015-10-02. My app audit logic would simply perform insertions into Transactions which delegates to the right table.

Amazon DynamoDB does not have a command to rename tables. The only table-related commands are CreateTable, DeleteTable, DescribeTable, ListTables and UpdateTable (which does not permit a rename).
Nor is there the ability to create aliases to tables.
The best approach would be for your application to create the desired tables and then direct transactions to the appropriate table.

Not exactly a work around, but you can create a backup, restore the backup to a new table with a new name, then optionally remove the original table.
This is not a "rename", and it could break a lot of things. Just a hint. Don't go ahead and do it on your production server!

Related

How to keep track of database changes

I'm working with Progress 11.6 appBuilder and procedure editor (and Data Dictionary).
Regularly we are doing modifications at the customer's database, there are two types of modifications:
Modifications of the structure: those are done, using interactive GUI of the data dictionary.
Modifications of the data: those are done, using the procedure editor
An example of a data modification in the procedure typically looks like this:
FOR EACH Table1 WHERE Table1.Field1 = <value>:
CREATE Table2.
Table2.Field1 = <value>.
Table2.Field2 = <some-other-value>.
END.
This is completely in contradiction with one of the basics of software delivery quantity, repeatability: there is no way to return to the previous situation!
Therefore I'm looking for ways to do this in an (automatable) repeatable way, hence my questions:
What can we use instead of the interactive GUI of data dictionary (without undo feature) in order to perform/undo database structure modifications?
What can we do in order to undo database data modifications? (Is there something like a Oracle redo log or a Oracle archive log in Progress?)
In case you say "What are you talking about? You can do "Undo transaction" in the data dictionary.", I mean the following:
I perform a transaction using the data dictionary, I leave the data dictionary and the day later the customer complains. When I open the data dictionary at that moment, the "Undo transaction" feature is disabled.
At a high level you should be creating "df files" (DDL scripts) and applying those to the customer database rather than manually making changes. There are many ways to create those files and you can automate the entire process with the appropriate tooling.
One of the most common ways to create a df file is to create whatever new schema you need in your development database and then use the "create an incremental df" facility in the data dictionary tool. This tool compares the development database schema to the target schema and builds a "df file" (DDL script) of the differences. You could connect directly to the target db for this process or you could have an empty skeleton db that you use for this.
How to create an incremental df file
(If you then reverse the comparison you can also create a reversing df file to undo the changes.)
Most df files consist of additions - new tables, new fields, new indexes. These can all be added online and that can all be completely scripted. And, of course, the individual df files and all of the supporting scripts can (and should) be stored in a repository (like git or whatever).
As for the data change scripts... there's no reason that those programs cannot be written as actual programs and saved in a repository. You can enclose the whole update in a transaction and UNDO it if that is appropriate. For what it is worth, I personally do not think that is a very good idea. Especially when large amounts of data are involved you really don't want to be creating monstrous multi-gigabyte undo logs. You're better off with a second "reversing transaction" script that will roll things back piecemeal. A side benefit is that you can still use that if you decide to back out the change a day or three afterwards.
The really gory details are going to depend on your development process and the customers change management process and the tooling available. It kind of sounds like there is not much process or tooling at either end of this relationship so you probably have a lot of adventures ahead of you!

Creating SQite-tables while running a program

I have seen several members on this forum warn about creating tables in a database while the app is running. Instead it is encouraged to create the tables while programming, and only fill the tables with data during runtime.
E.g while creating a note-app it would be convenient to let the user specify a name for a single note, and let this note be created as a table in a database. This by creating the table at the time the user creates the note, and letting the name of the note be the name of the table. Why would this be a bad practise? Have I misunderstood?
It would be highly inconvenient for both you and the user of such an app to create a table for every note the user might want to add. It's just not the way it works. A table should contain rows of information of the same type, such as a note for example, and each note should be added as a row/record in the said table. The table should be called notes for example, and if you want a name for each note, it can be a column in the notes table called name.
An analogy would be, if you are taking notes manually (without an electronic device that is), would you have one notebook with you and just add notes on different pages as you need to, or would you carry around a bag full of notebooks so that whenever you want to add a new note, you would add each note in a separate notebook?
The notebooks being equivalent to database tables in this analogy, and the pages of the said notebook being equivalent to rows in a database table.
I can't think of a reason for creating tables during runtime really. The database structure should be "set in stone" so to speak, and during runtime you should only manipulate the data in the database, which is adding, deleting, or updating rows/records in already existing tables. Creating tables during runtime is a big no-no.
I probably don't understand your question correctly, but it seems to me, that what you really want to do is to create a new row in a table I the database?

Axapta: How does temporally or inMemory tables works, multiple users once a time

Could you help to understand this approach:
I have to do a query that make some operations, i do not want to use containers, since i read that temporal tables are faster, at least for my case, but i dont get how it works:
The Web Service that i will use to make inserts in temporally table, will be consumed by some people in the same time, each values for each users will be diferents, because thats the reason why i want to do this.... but i dont understand how the temporal table, will manage data for each user; Because it will be only a table, so, if an user perform the WS, the table will contain some rows, but then another user could perform in the same time the WS, that should fill the table with another values, how is works?
Temporal tables are saved for each users or how it works, for my case?
Thanks in advance
Both temp tables are based on scope. When variable/buffer goes out of scope tables are dropped. So each user or WS call uses its own table.
You can find specs here:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg845661.aspx
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb314749.aspx

Best way to get rows changed in an sqlite db

I'm watching an sqlite db which an app uses.
I want to know what changes have been made since
I last checked.
I can dump to sql and diff against the last dump,
but it seems there should be a better way.
Is there?
Thanks,
Kent
PS Not to be coy, specifics: I'm managing photos with Shotwell, which has a great GUI.
I'm mirroring Shotwell's db in Postgresql, where I've restructured and augmented to my liking. After a Shotwell session, which involves adding, tagging, adjusting ... I want
to apply those changes to Postgres.
Add a field named _changed to your table(s). On every manipulation (update, insert into...) of a row set the field to the current timestamp. Now you can check which rows have been updated since.

Quickest way to delete all content in a database and rebuild from scratch?

I am designing a standard ASP.Net site with a SQL database. I have a database schema and During the tests I am changing data types amongst other tasks and the data contained inside really is not that important.
I keep getting errors as the old data does not match the new rules. This is not important and I am happy to clear everything but currently, I have to export/publish the database to a .sql file then import it from scratch - which is time consuming.
Is there a quick button / feature that I have missed that allows you to reset autonumbers / IDs to 1 and delete all content, or just speed up what I currently do?
There are a few options you could take, the "fastest" really depends on your database.
To firstly answer your questions on seeding, etc - TRUNCATE TABLE will delete all information in a table (very fast, as it is not logged) and will reset your identity column.
eg:
TRUNCATE TABLE dbo.table
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa260621(SQL.80).aspx
The significant restriction here is that you cannot use it on a table that is referenced by another table. In this case you can use a standard delete and then use DBCC CHECKIDENT
eg:
DELETE FROM dbo.table
GO
DBCC CHECKIDENT(dbo.table, reseed, 0)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms176057.aspx
Remember with delete to make sure you delete information in the correct order (i.e. taking into account foreign keys).
Another approach I often use is simply writing a complete tear-down / rebuild script when I want to reset the database. The basic premise is to tear down, or drop all database objects at the beginning of the script and then recreate them. This is not necessarily a solution for all scenarios, but for basic tasks works well for me. To avoid errors I would usually add my drop statements in IF statements, eg:
IF EXISTS
(
SELECT *
FROM information_schema.tables
WHERE table_name = 'table' AND table_schema = 'dbo'
)
BEGIN
DROP TABLE dbo.table
END
Why don't you write some T-SQL code to delete (or truncate, even quicker) all your tables? Be careful to take into consideration your integrity rules while clearing the tables: allways clean the tables containing the foreign key before cleaning the one containing the primary key.
If you just need to clear out data then just write a script to truncate all the data in each table. The truncate command also resets any IDENTITY fields as well.
TRUNCATE TABLE myTable
For each table you have. Then just run that script each time.
Here'a a quick way to delete all of the data in a table:
TRUNCATE TABLE YourTableName
You could write a script that would truncate all of your tables.
The alternative is to just DROP the table and re-create it.
If you really want to drop all data, then you could detach the database and create a brand new one; it's a bit extreme, but possibly faster than dropping everything first.
As others have suggested I find it preferable to maintain a script that builds the database from scratch and can tear down the database prior to rebuilding it. Develop this script just as you'd develop the rest of the application. I find it easier to understand the database through a script than by building it through a GUI, especially where there are complex relationships, triggers and so on.
It's also useful if you have other developers, and perhaps quicker and less prone to errors than copying your working database and handing it to another developer.
On release you can freeze that script and then create delta scripts for the next release which has just the changes from the initial schema to the new. This could also tear down the new objects created in the delta before recreating them so it can be easily re-run without having to wipe the entire database.
if you use Visual Studio 2010 then
open the App_Data folder of the solution and double click on the MDF File.
right click on your table , in the menu select "Show Table Data".
select all rows and delete all them.

Resources