April 5, 2005 at 8:57 am
Hello,
I am working with a vb6 Windows application that runs on Tablet PC's. There are about five SQL Server 2000 databases that tie into the application. SQL Server MSDE runs on the tablets, and currently there is only one instance running. There are efforts underway to upgrade the application to a .NET SmartClient.
One enhancement that needs to be made to the current application will be to provide a 'training mode' in the application for the users. The user will use the same application, but will work with 'dummy' data instead of live data when in training mode.
So far as I can tell, the easiest way to accomodate this would be to have a second instance of MSDE with 'copies' of all the databases running, but with the 'dummy' data contained in the databases copies. The application would have some mechanism for switching to 'training mode', and maybe by some change of a connection string, the dummy data would be presented in the application.
So aside from accomodating a 'training mode' feature in the application, the application would remain the same, and the database schema for the databases would remain the same. Only the data would change for 'training mode'.
I'm looking for some ideas on how to approach this. This application is used by five thousand field agents, and so we can't support this implementation on a case by case basis. So my thought is that the solution needs to have 'few moving parts'. If we can do this and get away from having two instances of MSDE, that would be great. I have not tried to set up identical databases in different directories on the same instance (I figure that would cause a problem in a system table or two someplace, but maybe not), but its one thing I want to investigate.
If you have any ideas on this, please share!
Thank you for your help!
CSDunn
April 5, 2005 at 10:56 am
There should be no problem with adding a second training database to the same instance of MSDE on the tablet. MSDE stores most of it's metadata in a database called master, which resides in it's own data and log files. Your existing database has another set of data and log files. It's database specific metadata is included in the same files as the user data. If you create another training database, MSDE will use seperate data and log files, which will contain the training metadata and userdata. there should be no conflict with having both a prod database and training database on the same instance of MSDE.
There are many ISPs that sell SQL Server databases to their website customers. Those SQL Servers host hundereds of seperate unrelated databases on a single instance of SQL Server with no conflict. MSDE will work the same way.
Ray Metz
April 6, 2005 at 9:54 am
Do the users start out with the "dummy data" and then, after training move to the real data? Can the dummy data be deleted after they are trained? Does their database start out pretty much empty except for the training data?
Student of SQL and Golf, Master of Neither
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