Sql Database Compare

In Azure, you can have your SQL Server workloads running in a hosted infrastructure (IaaS) or running as a hosted service (PaaS). Within PaaS, you have multiple deployment options and service tiers within each deployment option. The key question that you need to ask when deciding between PaaS or IaaS is do you want to manage your database, apply patches, take backups, or you want to delegate these operations to Azure?Depending on the answer, you have the following options:

• Azure SQL Database: A fully-managed SQL database engine, based on the latest stable Enterprise Edition of SQL Server. This is a relational database-as-a-service (DBaaS) hosted in the Azure cloud that falls into the industry category of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). SQL database has multiple deployment options, each of which is built on standardized hardware and software that is owned, hosted, and maintained by Microsoft. With SQL Database, you can use built-in features and functionality that require extensive configuration when used in SQL Server (either on-premises or in an Azure virtual machine). When using SQL Database, you pay-as-you-go with options to scale up or out for greater power with no interruption. SQL Database has additional features that are not available in SQL Server, such as built-in high availability, intelligence, and management. Azure SQL Database offers the following deployment options:

  • As a single database with its own set of resources managed via a SQL Database server. A single database is similar to a contained databases in SQL Server. This option is optimized for modern application development of new cloud-born applications.
  • An elastic pool, which is a collection of databases with a shared set of resources managed via a SQL Database server. Single databases can be moved into and out of an elastic pool. This option is optimized for modern application development of new cloud-born applications using the multi-tenant SaaS application.
  • Managed instance, which is a collection of system and user databases with a shared set of resources. A managed instance is similar to an instance of the [Microsoft SQL Server database engine] offering shared resources for databases and additional instance-scoped features. Managed instance supports database migration from on-premises with minimal to no database change. This option provides all of the PaaS benefits of Azure SQL Database but adds capabilities that were previously only available in SQL VMs. This includes a native virtual network (VNet) and near 100% compatibility with on-premises SQL Server.

• SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines falls into the industry category Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and allows you to run SQL Server inside a fully-managed virtual machine in the Azure cloud. SQL Server virtual machines also run on standardized hardware that is owned, hosted, and maintained by Microsoft. When using SQL Server on a VM, you can either pay-as you-go for a SQL Server license already included in a SQL Server image or easily use an existing license. You can also stop or resume the VM as needed.SQL Server installed and hosted in the cloud on Windows Server or Linux virtual machines (VMs) running on Azure, also known as an infrastructure as a service (IaaS). SQL Server on Azure virtual machines is a good option for migrating on-premises SQL Server databases and applications without any database change. All recent versions and editions of SQL Server are available for installation in an IaaS virtual machine. The most significant difference from SQL Database is that SQL Server VMs allow full control over the database engine. You can choose when maintenance/patching will start, to change the recovery model to simple or bulk logged to enable faster load less log, to pause or start engine when needed, and you can fully customize the SQL Server database engine. With this additional control comes with added responsibility to manage the virtual machines.

The main differences between these options are listed in the following table:

Learn how each deployment option fits into the Microsoft data platform and get help matching the right option to your business requirements. Whether you prioritize cost savings or minimal administration ahead of everything else, this article can help you decide which approach delivers against the business requirements you care about most.

Microsoft's SQL data platform

One of the first things to understand in any discussion of Azure versus on-premises SQL Server databases is that you can use it all. Microsoft’s data platform leverages SQL Server technology and makes it available across physical on-premises machines, private cloud environments, third-party hosted private cloud environments, and public cloud. SQL Server on Azure virtual machines enables you to meet unique and diverse business needs through a combination of on-premises and cloud-hosted deployments, while using the same set of server products, development tools, and expertise across these environments.

As seen in the diagram, each offering can be characterized by the level of administration you have over the infrastructure (on the X axis), and by the degree of cost efficiency achieved by database level consolidation and automation (on the Y axis).

When designing an application, four basic options are available for hosting the SQL Server part of the application:

• SQL Server on non-virtualized physical machines
• SQL Server in on-premises virtualized machines (private cloud)
• SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machine (Microsoft public cloud)
• Azure SQL Database (Microsoft public cloud)

In the following sections, you learn about SQL Server in the Microsoft public cloud: Azure SQL Database and SQL Server on Azure VMs. In addition, you explore common business motivators for determining which option works best for your application.

A closer look at Azure SQL Database and SQL Server on Azure VMs

In general, these two SQL options are optimized for different purposes:

• Azure SQL Database

Optimized to reduce overall management costs to the minimum for provisioning and managing many databases. It reduces ongoing administration costs because you do not have to manage any virtual machines, operating system or database software. You do not have to manage upgrades, high availability, or backups. In general, Azure SQL Database can dramatically increase the number of databases managed by a single IT or development resource. Elastic pools also support SaaS multi-tenant application architectures with features including tenant isolation and the ability to scale to reduce costs by sharing resources across databases. Managed instance provides support for instance-scoped features enabling easy migration of existing applications, as well as sharing resources amongst databases.

• SQL Server running on Azure VMs

Optimized for migrating existing applications to Azure or extending existing on-premises applications to the cloud in hybrid deployments. In addition, you can use SQL Server in a virtual machine to develop and test traditional SQL Server applications. With SQL Server on Azure VMs, you have the full administrative rights over a dedicated SQL Server instance and a cloud-based VM. It is a perfect choice when an organization already has IT resources available to maintain the virtual machines. These capabilities allow you to build a highly customized system to address your application’s specific performance and availability requirements.

The following table summarizes the main characteristics of SQL Database and SQL Server on Azure VMs:

Business motivations for choosing Azure SQL Database or SQL Server on Azure VMs

There are several factors that can influence your decision to choose PaaS or IaaS to host your SQL databases:

• Cost - Both PaaS and IaaS option include base price that cover underlying infrastructure and licensing. However, with IaaS option you need to invest additional time and resources to manage your database, while in PaaS you are getting these administration features included in the price. IaaS option enables you to shut-down your resources while you are not using them to decrease the cost, while PaaS version is always running unless if you drop and re-create your resources when they are needed.
• Administration - PaaS options reduce the amount of time that you need to invest to administer the database. However, it also limits the range of custom administration tasks and scripts that you can perform or run. For example, the CLR is not supported with single or pooled databases, but is supported for a managed instance. Also, no deployment options in PaaS support the use of trace flags.
• Service-Level Agreement - Both IaaS and PaaS provide high, industry standard SLA. PaaS option guarantees 99.99% SLA, while IaaS guarantees 99.95% SLA for infrastructure, meaning that you need to implement additional mechanisms to ensure availability of your databases. In the extreme case, if you want to implement High-availability solution that is matching PaaS, you might need to create additional SQL Server in VM and configure AlwaysOn Availability groups, which might double the cost of your database.
• Time to move to Azure - SQL Server in Azure VM is the exact match of your environment, so migration from on-premises to Azure SQL VM is not different than moving the databases from one on-premises server to another. Managed instance also enables extremely easy migration; however, there might be some changes that you need to apply before you migrate to a managed instance.

These factors will be discussed in more details in the following sections.

Cost

Whether you’re a startup that is strapped for cash, or a team in an established company that operates under tight budget constraints, limited funding is often the primary driver when deciding how to host your databases. In this section, you learn about the billing and licensing basics in Azure with regards to these two relational database options: SQL Database and SQL Server on Azure VMs. You also learn about calculating the total application cost.

Billing and licensing basics

Currently, SQL Database is sold as a service and is available with several deployment options and in several service tiers with different prices for resources, all of which are billed hourly at a fixed rate based on the service tier and compute size you choose. For the latest information on the current supported service tiers, compute sizes, and storage amounts, see DTU-based purchasing model and vCore-based purchasing model.

• With SQL Database single database, you can choose a service tier that fits your needs from a wide range of prices starting from 5$/month for basic tier.
• You can create elastic pools to share resources among database instances to reduce costs and accommodate usage spikes.
• With SQL Database managed instance, you can also bring your own license. For more information on bring-your-own licensing, see License Mobility through Software Assurance on Azure or use Azure Hybrid Benefit calculator to see how to save up to 40%.

In addition, you are billed for outgoing Internet traffic at regular data transfer rates. You can dynamically adjust service tiers and compute sizes to match your application’s varied throughput needs.

With SQL Database, the database software is automatically configured, patched, and upgraded by Microsoft, which reduces your administration costs. In addition, its built-in backup capabilities help you achieve significant cost savings, especially when you have a large number of databases.

With SQL Server on Azure VMs, you can use any of the platform-provided SQL Server images (which includes a license) or bring your SQL Server license. All the supported SQL Server versions (2008R2, 2012, 2014, 2016) and editions (Developer, Express, Web, Standard, Enterprise) are available. In addition, Bring-Your-Own-License versions (BYOL) of the images are available. When using the Azure provided images, the operational cost depends on the VM size and the edition of SQL Server you choose. Regardless of VM size or SQL Server edition, you pay per-minute licensing cost of SQL Server and the Windows or Linux Server, along with the Azure Storage cost for the VM disks. The per-minute billing option allows you to use SQL Server for as long as you need without buying addition SQL Server licenses. If you bring your own SQL Server license to Azure, you are charged for server and storage costs only. For more information on bring-your-own licensing, see License Mobility through Software Assurance on Azure. In addition, you are billed for outgoing Internet traffic at regular data transfer rates.

Calculating the total application cost

When you start using a cloud platform, the cost of running your application includes the cost for new development and ongoing administration costs, plus the public cloud platform service costs.

When using Azure SQL Database:

• Highly minimized administration costs
• Limited development costs for migrated applications (managed instances)
• SQL Database service costs
• No hardware purchasing costs

When using SQL Server on Azure VMs:

• Higher administration costs
• Limited to no development costs for migrated applications
• Virtual Machine service costs
• No hardware purchasing costs

For more information on pricing, see the following resources:

• Virtual machine pricing for SQL and for Windows

Administration

For many businesses, the decision to transition to a cloud service is as much about offloading complexity of administration as it is cost. With IaaS and PaaS, Microsoft administers the underlying infrastructure and automatically replicates all data to provide disaster recovery, configures and upgrades the database software, manages load balancing, and does transparent failover if there is a server failure within a data center.

• With Azure SQL Database, you can continue to administer your database, but you no longer need to manage the database engine, the operating system, or the hardware. Examples of items you can continue to administer include databases and logins, index and query tuning, and auditing and security. Additionally, configuring high availability to another data center requires minimal configuration and administration.
• With SQL Server on Azure VMs, you have full control over the operating system and SQL Server instance configuration. With a VM, it’s up to you to decide when to update/upgrade the operating system and database software and when to install any additional software such as anti-virus. Some automated features are provided to dramatically simplify patching, backup, and high availability. In addition, you can control the size of the VM, the number of disks, and their storage configurations. Azure allows you to change the size of a VM as needed. For information, see Virtual Machine and Cloud Service Sizes for Azure.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

For many IT departments, meeting up-time obligations of a Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a top priority. In this section, we look at what SLA applies to each database hosting option.

For SQL Database, Microsoft provides an availability SLA of 99.99%. For the latest information, see Service Level Agreement.

For SQL Server running on Azure VMs, Microsoft provides an availability SLA of 99.95% that covers just the Virtual Machine. This SLA does not cover the processes (such as SQL Server) running on the VM and requires that you host at least two VM instances in an availability set. For the latest information, see the VM SLA. For database high availability (HA) within VMs, you should configure one of the supported high availability options in SQL Server, such as Always On Availability Groups. Using a supported high availability option doesn't provide an additional SLA, but allows you to achieve >99.99% database availability.

Time to move to Azure

SQL Database single databases or elastic pools are the right solution for cloud-designed applications when developer productivity and fast time-to-market for new solutions are critical. With programmatic DBA-like functionality, it is perfect for cloud architects and developers as it lowers the need for managing the underlying operating system and database.

SQL Database managed instance greatly simplifies the migration of existing applications to Azure SQL Database, enabling you to bring migrated database applications to market in Azure quickly.

SQL Server running on Azure VMs is perfect if your existing or new applications require large databases or access to all features in SQL Server or Windows/Linux, and you want to avoid the time and expense of acquiring new on-premises hardware. It is also a good fit when you want to migrate existing on-premises applications and databases to Azure as-is - in cases where Azure SQL Database managed instance is not a good fit. Since you do not need to change the presentation, application, and data layers, you save time and budget on re-architecting your existing solution. Instead, you can focus on migrating all your solutions to Azure and in doing some performance optimizations that may be required by the Azure platform. For more information, see Performance Best Practices for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines.

Next steps

• See Your first Azure SQL Database to get started with SQL Database.
• See SQL Database pricing.
• See Provision a SQL Server virtual machine in Azure to get started with SQL Server on Azure VMs.

You can compare the data that is contained in two databases. The databases that you compare are known as the source and the target.

Note

Database projects and .dacpac or .bacpac packages cannot be the source or target in a data comparison.

As the data is compared, a Data Manipulation Language (DML) script is generated, which you can use to synchronize the differing databases by updating some or all of the data on the target database. When the data comparison finishes, its results appear in the Data Compare window of Visual Studio.

After the comparison finishes, you can take other steps:

• You can view the differences between the two databases. For more information, see Viewing Data Differences.

• You can update all or part of the target to match the source. For more information, see Synchronizing Database Data.

For more information, see Compare and Synchronize Data in One or More Tables with Data in a Reference Database.

Note

You can also compare the schema of two databases or of two versions of the same database. For more information, see How to: Use Schema Compare to Compare Different Database Definitions.

Comparing Database Data

To compare data by using the New Data Comparison Wizard

1. On the SQL menu, point to Data Compare, and then click New Data Comparison.

   The New Data Comparison wizard appears. Also, the Data Compare window opens, and Visual Studio automatically assigns it a name such as DataCompare1.

2. Identify the source and target databases.

   If the Source Database list or the Target Database list is empty, click New Connection. In the Connection Properties dialog box, identify the server on which the database resides and the type of authentication to use when connecting to the database. Then, click OK to close the Connection Properties dialog box and return to the Data Compare wizard.

   On the first page of the Data Compare wizard, verify that the information for each database is correct, specify which records you want to include in the results, and then click Next. The second page of the Data Compare wizard appears and shows a hierarchical listing of the tables and views in the database.

3. Select the check boxes for the tables and views that you want to compare. Optionally, expand the nodes for database objects, and then select the check boxes for columns within those objects that you want to compare.

   Note

   Tables and views must meet two criteria to appear in the listing. First, the schemas of the objects must match between the source and target databases. Second, only tables and views that have a primary key, a unique key, a unique index, or a unique constraint appear in the list. If no tables or views meet both criteria, the list will be empty.

4. If more than one key is present, you can use the Comparison Key column to specify the key on which to base the data comparison. For example, you can specify whether to base the comparison on the primary key column or on another (uniquely identifiable) key column.

5. Click Finish.

   The comparison starts.

   Note

   You can stop a data comparison operation that is in progress by opening the SQL menu, clicking Data Compare, and then clicking Stop Data Comparison.

   When the comparison is finished, you can view the data differences between the two databases. You can also update part or all the data in the target database to match the data in the source database.

To compare data by using the Visual Studio automation model

1. Open the View menu, point to Other Windows, and click Command Window.

2. In the Command Window, type the following command:

   Replace the placeholders (sServerName, sDatabaseName, sUserName, sPassword, sDisplayName, tServerName, tDatabaseName, tUserName, tPassword, and tDisplayName) with the values for your source and target databases.

   If you do not specify a source and a target, the New Data Comparison dialog box appears. For more information about the parameters for the Sql.NewDataComparison command, see Automation Command Reference for Database Features of Visual Studio Team System.

   The data in the specified source and target databases are compared. The results appear in a Data Compare session. For more information about how to view results or synchronize the data, see Viewing Data Differences and Synchronizing Database Data.

Viewing Data Differences

After you compare the data in two databases, Data Compare lists each database object that you compared and its status. You can also view results for the records within each object, grouped by status. For more information about the status designations, see Compare and Synchronize Data in One or More Tables with Data in a Reference Database.

After you view the differences, you can update the target to match the source for some or all of the objects or records that are different, missing, or new. For more information, see Synchronizing Database Data.

To view data differences

1. Compare the data in a source and a target database. For more information, see Compare Database Data.

2. (Optional) Do one or both of the following:

   • By default, the results for all objects appear, regardless of their status. To display only those objects that have a particular status, click an option in the Filter list.

   • To view results for records within a particular object, click the object in the main results pane, and then click a tab in the records view pane. Each tab displays all records within that object that have a particular status: different, only in source, only in target, and identical. Data appears by record and column.

Synchronizing Database Data

After you compare the data in two databases, you can synchronize them by updating all or part of the target to match the source. You can compare the data in two kinds of database objects: tables and views.

To update target data by using the Write Updates command

1. Compare the data in a source and a target database. For more information, see Compare Database Data.

   After the comparison finishes, the Data Compare window lists results for the objects that were compared. Four columns (named Different Records, Only in Source, Only in Target, and Identical Records) display information about objects that were not identical. For each such object, these columns display how many records were found to be different, and how many records an update operation would change. Those two numbers match at first, but in step 4 you can change which objects to update.

   For more information, see Compare and Synchronize Data in One or More Tables with Data in a Reference Database.

2. In the table of the Data Compare window, click a row.

   The details pane shows results for the records in the database object that you clicked. Records are grouped by status onto tabs, which you can use to specify the data that will be propagated from the source to the target.

3. In the details pane, click a tab whose name contains a number other than zero (0).

   The Update column of the Only in Target table contains check boxes that you can use to select rows to be updated. By default, each check box is selected.

4. Clear check boxes for records in the target that you do not want to update with data from the source.

   When you clear a check box, you reduce the number of records to update, and the display changes to reflect your actions. This number appears in the status line of the details pane and in the corresponding column in the main results pane, as described in step 1.

5. (Optional) Click Generate Script.

   A Transact-SQL editor window opens and shows the Data Manipulation Language (DML) script that would be used to update the target.

6. To synchronize records that are different, missing, or new, click Update Target.

   Note

   While the target database is being updated, you can cancel the operation by clicking Stop Writing to Target.

   The data of the selected records in the target is updated with the data from the corresponding records in the source.

   Note

   If you opt to update indexed views, the Update Target operation might fail if this action causes duplicate keys to be inserted into the same table.

To update target data by using a Transact-SQL script

1. Compare the data in a source and a target database. For more information, see Compare Database Data.

   After the comparison finishes, the Data Compare window lists the objects that were compared. For more information, see Compare and Synchronize Data in One or More Tables with Data in a Reference Database.

2. (Optional) In the details pane, clear the check boxes for records in the target that you do not want to update, as described in the previous procedure.

3. Click Generate Script.

   A new window shows the Transact-SQL script that would propagate the changes necessary to make the data in the target match the data in the source. The new window is given a name such as DataUpdate_Database_1.sql.

   This script reflects changes that you have made in the details pane. For example, you might have cleared a check box for a given row in the Only in Target page for the [dbo].[Shippers] table. In that case, the script would not update that row.

4. (Optional) Edit this script in the DataUpdate_Database_1.sql window.

5. (Optional but recommended) Back up the target database.

6. Click Execute to update the target database.

   Specify a connection to the target database that you want to update.

   Fifa street 4 serial key pc. Important

   By default, the updates occur within the scope of a transaction. If errors occur, you can roll back the whole update. You can change this behavior.

   The data of the selected records in the target is updated with the data from the corresponding records in the source.

See Also