OpenDataSource or Linked Servers - what is better for me?

  • Hi,

    20 or 30 times a day our users want to consolidate information from various servers into one report and also transfer data from one server to another. Volumes are low and the connection between sites is slow (64k / 128K WAN) and not 100% reliable. Users also need to select the databases they want to report on if that is what they are doing.

    Our environment is SQL Server 2000 and a mixture of Windows 2000 and 2003 Servers.

    We could set up linked servers but OpenDataSource would appear to give better flexibility for our needs. I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on the pros and cons of either approach?

    TIA, Peter

     

  • OpenDataSource is adhoc and can be adhoc access can be disabled and has more overhead I'm sure

    Look at sp_setnetname which would allow you to change the underlying network name of a linked server.

    I create linked servers that are not actual servernames and use sp_setnetname to set up where I want it to go eg the same linked server can be used in dev,test, prod etc but each environment points to a different boxn

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