We have 70+ SQL Server 2008 databases that need to be copied from an OLTP environment to a separate reporting server. Once the DB’s are copied, we will do some partial data transformation: de-normalization, row level security, etc.
SSRS Reports will be written based on these static denormalized tables and views.
We have a small nightly window for copying and transforming all 70 databases (3 hours).
Currently databases average about 10GB.
Options:
1. Transactional replication:
We would need to create 100+ static denormalized tables on each reporting database.
Doing this for all 70 databases almost reaches our nightly time limit.
As the databases grow we will exceed the time limit. We thought of mixing denormalized tables with views to speed up transformation. But then there would be some dynamic and some static data which is not a solution we can use.
Also with 70 databases using transactional replication we are concerned about bandwidth usage.
2. Snapshot replication:
Copy the entire database each night.
This means we could have a mixture of denormalized tables and views so the data transformation process is quicker.
But the snapshot is a full data copy, so as the DB grows, we will exceed our time limit for completing copy and transformation.
3. Log shipping:
In our nightly window, we could use the log shipping to update the reporting databases, then truncate and repopulate the denormalized tables and use some views.
However, I understand that with log shipping, extra tables and views cannot be added to the subscribing database.
4. Mirroring:
Mirroring is being deprecated, but also the DB is not active for reporting against until failover.
5. SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn.
We don’t have SQL Server 2012 yet, can this be configured to do an update once a day instead of realtime?
And can extra tables and views be created on the subscribing database (our reporting databases)?
6. Merge replication:
This is meant to be for combining multiple data sources into one database.
But is looks like it allows for a scheduled update (once per day) and only updates the subscriber DB with the latest changes rather than doing an entire snapshot.
It requires adding a rowversion column to every table but we could handle this. Also with this solution would additional tables be able to be created on the subscriber database without the update getting out of sync?
- The final option is that we use SSIS to select only the data we need from the OLTP databases. I think this options creates more risk as we would have to handle inserts/updates/deletes to our denormalized tables, rather than just drop and recreate the denormalized tables daily.
Any help on our options would be greatly appreciated.
If I’ve made any incorrect assumptions, please say.
If it were me, I’d go with transactional replication that runs continuously and have views (possibly indexed) at the subscriber. This has the advantage of not having to wait for the data to come over since it’s always coming over.