I often have data in Excel or text that I need to get into SqlServer. I can use ODBC to query the Excel file and I can parse the text file. What I want though is some tool that will just grab the data and put it into tables with little / no effort. Does anyone know of such a tool?
Have you tried the SQL Server Import/Export Wizard ?
In SQL Server Management Studio, right-click your Database Name, and select Tasks menu, Import Data. For Data Source, select Microsoft Excel, browse to the .XLS...
If you are using Sql Server look at Integration Services (SSIS).
You can also take a look at parse-o-matic
Use DTS or SSIS depending on which version of SQL Server you have. There is an import wizard which can get you started, but data imports are rarely simple and usually involve some sort of data cleanup so that your incoming data is acceptable to the table where you intend to store it. Excel data, in my experience, is usually particularly bad inthis respect becasue it often isn't stored properly in Excel to begin with.
I haven't seen commercial tools that do this. I create this kind of tools at work all the time, and the data validation is not trivial. This just makes sure that you don't have bad data making it into your database.
I found that for simple data conversion needs something like FileHelpers is pretty good. It still needs programming though. This framework is fairly easy to use, and somebody with a little bit of experience could bang something out for you.
On further thought, you can use the SQL Server bcp utility to upload the contents of a text file. This is a command-line utility and has a lot of switches. I would suggest you experiment on a test table before you use this in a production table.
It's been a while since I used it, so I can't remember if you can directly use an Excel spreadsheet. Text files are always the easiest to deal with in any case.
Seems like it'd be pretty easy to write a script that reads the text file, and converts it to "INSERT * into TABLE" Sql statements. I suspect this has already been done, but a simple implementation would be less than 100 lines of code in your favorite scripting language.
Hey, Google says SQLServer comes with such a tool, BULK INSERT:
Related
I have a few XML files containing data for a research project which I need to run some statistics on. The amount of data is close to 100GB.
The structure is not so complex (could be mapped to perhaps 10 tables in a relational model), and given the nature of the problem, this data will never be updated again, I only need it available in a place where it's easy to run queries on.
I've read about XML databases, and the possibility of running XPATH-style queries on it, but I never used them and I'm not so comfortable with it. Having the data in a relational database would be my preferred choice.
So, I'm looking for a way to covert the data stored in XML into a relational database (think of a big .sql file similar to the one generated by mysqldump, but anything else would do).
The ultimate goal is to be able to run SQL queries for crunching the data.
After some research I'm almost convinced I have to write it on my own.
But I feel this is a common problem, and therefore there should be a tool which already does that.
So, do you know of any tool that would transform XML data into a relational database?
PS1:
My idea would be something like (it can work differently, but just to make sure you get my point):
Analyse the data structure (based on the XML themselves, or on a XSD)
Build the relational database (tables, keys) based on that structure
Generate SQL statements to create the database
Generate SQL statements to create fill in the data
PS2:
I've seen some posts here in SO but still I couldn't find a solution.
Microsoft's "Xml Bulk Load" tool seems to do something in that direction, but I don't have a MS SQL Server.
Databases are not the only way to search data. I can highly recommend Apache Solr
Strategies to Implement search on XML file
Keep your raw data as XML and search it using the Solr index
Importing XML files of the right format into a MySql database is easy:
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/load-xml.html
This means, you typically have to transform your XML data into that kind of format. How you do this depends on the complexity of the transformation, what programming languages you know, and if you want to use XSLT (which is most probably a good idea).
From your former answers it seems you know Python, so http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/python.html may be the right thing for you to start with.
Take a look at StAX instead of XSD for analyzing/extraction of data. It's stream based and can deal with huge XML files.
If you feel comfortable with Perl, I've had pretty good luck with XML::Twig module for processing really big XML files.
Basically, all you need is to setup few twig handlers and import your data into MySQL using DBI/DBD::mysql.
There is pretty good example on xmltwig.org.
If you comfortable with commercial products, you might want to have a look at Data Wizard for MySQL by the SQL Maestro Group.
This application is targeted especially at exporting and, of course, importing data from/ to MySQL databases. This also includes XML import. You can download a 30-day trial to check if this is what you are looking for.
I have to admit that I did not use the MySQL product line from them yet, but I had a good user experience with their Firebird Maestro and SQLite Maestro products.
Is there any program (preferably official) for Windows that can be used to manipulate MySQL data dumps?
For example, easily importing a MySQL text dump and create the database for all kinds of manipulations (you know, common data operations such as select, update, insert, delete, export into CSV, etc.) via a GUI interface. Much like what you can do with MS Excel and MS Access.
I know only phpMyAdmin which requires a local web server environment which might a little too much for what I need.
I thought http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/ was what I needed and installed to find out that it's not.
Any such tools exist? I ask this is actually because these MySQL dumps are for my users who know nothing about SQL or anything technical. This is for them, not me. After they downloaded the SQL I provided, they ask me: "How can I open it?"
I tried to provide them CSV, but CSV generated by this approach: http://www.kavoir.com/2010/11/mysql-export-table-to-csv-text-files-for-excel.html would contain stuff like \" if the original data contains ". When you open the CSV in Excel, \" are all over the place.
http://www.webyog.com/en/
I used to use SQLyog at my last job. It's a pretty decent GUI tool for interacting with MySQL, either local or remote. It'll cost you $99 at the cheapest, but you can try it for 30 days. If you like it and it makes life easier, it could be worth the $99, as well.
Running a local server is actually pretty easy. I use xampp which was really easy to install and came set up and ready to use phpMyAdmin. It's also really easy to shut the whole server (or just parts of it) down when it's not in use to conserve system resources.
could anyone advise me direct me to a site that explains the best way to go about this I'm sure I could figure it out with allot of time invested but just looking for a jump start. I don't want to use the migration tool either as I just want to put fmp xml files on the server and it create new MySql databases based on the fmpxml results provided
thanks
Technically you can write a XSLT to transform the XML files into SQL. It's pretty much straightforward for data (except data in container fields), but with some effort you can even transfer the scheme from DDR reports (but I doubt it worth it for a single project).
Which version of MySQL? v6 has LOAD XML which will make things easy for you.
If not v6, then you are dealing with stored procedures, which can be a pain. If you need v5, it might make sense to install MySQL6, get the data in there using LOAD XML, and then do a mysqldump, which you can import into v5.
Here is a good link:
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/xml-in-mysql5.1-6.0.html
I have a shapefile that I would like to upload to a spatial SQL Server 2008. I have tried using this tool: SQL Server 2008 Spatial Tools. But without luck.
Does anyone know any other (free) tools for doing this?
You can use ogr2ogr to convert from shapefile to GML (or many other formats) and then use SQL Server's GeomFromGML to import. You will need to call GeomFromGML for each feature in your shapefile, but that's a relatively easy program to write.
I have written code in arcbjects for do this task. If you have license arcview or engine you can create a console application in c# and use this code: see https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/33917/how-to-import-shapefiles-into-ms-sql-2008-and-then-view-that-data-using-qgis?lq=1
UPDATE: I decided I would just point people to the official Github repo instead: https://github.com/zer0infinity/OGR2GUI
This [ogr2ogr fork] tool will attempt to parse the content of the input file (in my case, it was a shapefile) and output it as a bunch of different formats (in my case, I needed it as a CSV, but you can even export your file as a SQLite file). Unfortunately it doens't do straight up SQL, but you can do a dump from a SQLite viewer such as SQLite Browser and import it onto MS SQL. I did notice some inefficiencies when converting to SQLite (I lost some attributes/tables). I also tried MobileMapper Office (MMO) (with better luck) to export to CSV and it did preserve a lot of the data, but you'd then need to write a script to import the data to SQL. If you are going that route, let me know, I'm currently writing a VBA script to deal with the exported data from MMO.
If you're hoping to build this into your application (a script of some sort), you may have some luck trying with ogr2ogr, but you never know what the data is going to look like. documentation is found here http://www.gdal.org/ogr2ogr.html
Original answer: Save yourself sometime and just use this amazing tool: http://ogr2gui.ca/
It's based off ogr2ogr, but with a nice GUI.
I've made an app for importing shapefiles into SQL Server. It's made primarily to suit my needs but i had some spare time so i made an installer for you.
Some nice things you can do with it:
choose encoding of input shapefile
rename/remap destination table column names
choose the destination table name
set the primary key for the destination table
It has a user interface and you can download it for free.
More details can be found on my blog, here's the link: Import shapefiles into SQL Server
After looking at a lot of questions..i found no real answer for this.
I redisigned an Database for our customer.
With Microsoft Access i found a good Tool to get old table Data in my new well formed Database Structure. It is really easy but takes a lot of time (cause handling old Data with a lot of care).
Are there any Open Source Tools that bring that facilities like Microsoft Access?
To clear it up: I "just" want to reorder old Firebird Database Data in a new "best-practise" Way.
Edit:
I would be really nice if i can get a Log File or something similar to have some documentation on the changes.
Update:
After checking some of the Tools of that Wikipedia Site. I found no real Logging Mechanism.
How do you documentate the changes on a Database? Simply by writing it down?
Result:
So i dont got an real answer...i ma still searching for an nice tool. thnak you guys for the hints and your thoughts regarding this question. I want to reward Kenneth Cochran with the Bounty cause he pointed me to ETL. Thank you!
Talend's Open Source ETL supports FireBird. Very cool tool.
http://www.talend.com/download.php?src=DataGovernanceBlog
It sounds like what you're asking for is an ETL(extract, transform, load) tool.
Wikipedia has a list of open source tools that may help with this. I've not used any of them personally.
Well, I used the Pentaho suite for doing ETL using their Kettle tool.
It's quite easy to use and should be more than enough to reach your intent.
And it's open source.
Give a look at it.
I advice you to use a tool like IBExpert or Database Workbench which are the best tools for Firebird.
For migrating Firebird 1.5 to Firebird 2.1 : you just have to make a backup of your database with Firebird 1.5 server and restore your database with Firebird 2.1 server
I've used Excel in the past to document data model changes - each worksheet used the application version in order to sync with our tags in CVS. Every thing was logged in it - columns that were removed as well as minor alterations to datatypes like varchar(10) to varchar(20) etc along with a note describing why the change was made.
Personally, I've only ever scripted things like these as DDL/DML scripts broken into a script that dealt with table creation, constraint dropping, index drops, DML script(s), constraint application, index application, and removing orphaned tables.
If you want a basic ETL tool, that is client based (and cheap at $300), look at Advanced Query Tool. It mainly queries any type of ODBC connection(including Excel files set up that way), but also has some extended features, including moving data. And has a command line interface. http://www.querytool.com/
I've used it instead of Informatica for one-off jobs, but I've also used to extract from Excel to another file for business users, for a few months, scheduled from my desktop.