Typical Usage of Change Tracking

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Typical Usage of Change Tracking

ahmed_b72

Ten Centuries

Points: 1251
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December 8, 2011 at 10:58 pm

#247997

Hi,
I've learnt on Change Tracking
and successfully implemented it on a test environment.
What isn't clearly yet to me is, when in practical Change Tracking could be used?
What I understood from msdn, it can be used to synchronize data changes in a table in a database to some other data store, but isn't that what can be done by replication?

Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

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Koen Verbeeck SSC Guru Points: 259135 More actions · Answer 1

You can use change tracking to detect the changes and start off an incremental load to a data warehouse. Replication would just make the same database, while an ETL process that uses change tracking would feed a data warehouse that has a totally different structure than the source.

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ahmed_b72 Ten Centuries Points: 1251 More actions · Answer 2

Sounds interesting!

But the ETL implimintation is useful in case of Change Data Capture (CDC) and not Change Tracking.

Thanks for sharing the idea anyway.

Koen Verbeeck SSC Guru Points: 259135 More actions · Answer 3

ahmed_b72 (12/11/2011)
Sounds interesting!
But the ETL implimintation is useful in case of Change Data Capture (CDC) and not Change Tracking.
Thanks for sharing the idea anyway.

CDC is quite a heavy weight solution. If your source database can't handle the load, or you don't need all the intermediary changes, change tracking is a good alternative.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb933875.aspx

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Devendrakumar SSC-Forever Points: 42493 More actions · Answer 4

But the ETL implimintation is useful in case of Change Data Capture (CDC) and not Change Tracking.

What is your definition of Change Tracking? What all information you want to track?

ahmed_b72 Ten Centuries Points: 1251 More actions · Answer 5

Hi Koen,

Thanks for making it clear like crystal to me.

Hi Dev,

SQL Server has two solutions to track changes made on tables: "Change Tracking" and "CDC". You can search the msdn to learn about them.

Cheers,

Koen Verbeeck SSC Guru Points: 259135 More actions · Answer 6

ahmed_b72 (12/12/2011)
Hi Koen,
Thanks for making it clear like crystal to me.

No problem, glad to help.

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My blog at https://sqlkover.com.
MCSE Business Intelligence - Microsoft Data Platform MVP

Devendrakumar SSC-Forever Points: 42493 More actions · Answer 7

hmmm... I learnt something new today. People use CDC & Change Tracking synonymously & I was doing the same. Thanks to both of you to bring this discussion here.