Question

I am in a scenario where I want to work with many databases. Some are in my project and some are external. My application would transfer data from the external database(one which reside in a remote machine. I know the ip and user credentials) to my temp database. I want to create the tables in that database to my database. What is the best method to do this? I would work with ASP.NET 3.5 . Any recommendations like WCF or Web service?

Answer 1

You have to answer yourself some questions:

1. Is the schema of source and target
   database stable?
2. Can you afford downtime during synchronization?
3. Do you transfer data and structure or only data?
4. How often do you need synchronization? (once a day or always recent data)

The answer depends on this questions but one simple solution ist to use SMO and the “Transfer” task.

      Server srv = default(Server); 
   srv = new Server(); 
   //Reference the AdventureWorks database 
   Database db = default(Database); 
   db = srv.Databases("AdventureWorks"); 
   //Create a new database that is to be destination database. 
   Database dbCopy = default(Database); 
   dbCopy = new Database(srv, "AdventureWorksCopy"); 
   dbCopy.Create(); 
   //Define a Transfer object and set the required options and properties. 
   Transfer xfr = default(Transfer); 
   xfr = new Transfer(db); 
   xfr.CopyAllTables = true; 
   xfr.Options.WithDependencies = true; 
   xfr.Options.ContinueScriptingOnError = true; 
   xfr.DestinationDatabase = "AdventureWorksCopy"; 
   xfr.DestinationServer = srv.Name; 
   xfr.DestinationLoginSecure = true; 
   xfr.CopySchema = true; 
   //Script the transfer. Alternatively perform immediate data transfer 
   // with TransferData method. 
   xfr.ScriptTransfer();