The 7 countries that have “lost the number” of our site!

-- sorry Mr. Biden, I just couldn’t resist!

Every time I look at the World map on google analytics, that cool map that shows where the visitors came from, I see a handful of white spots – that is countries from which we did not have any visitors in the last 30 days. I am always curious to know which ones those countries are but they are usually on the same general area so I don’t often drill down. Today it occurred to me that it would be interesting to go back in time and see if there were any countries from which no one ever visited our website – I set the range from January 1, 2008 to today and found that in those 14 months we have not had a single visitor from 7 countries out of 200 and some countries. And the “winners” are:

From Africa

• Burkina Faso
• Central African Republic
• Madagascar
• Mauritania
• Western Sahara

From Asia:

• Kyrgyzstan
• Turkmenistan

Please do keep in mind that our website: http://www.xsql.com is a niche site providing database tools to database administrators and software developers and therefore, this “finding” does not necessarily mean anything. I just found this interesting and decided to share with ya’ll!

Executing multiple Sql Scripts

If you work with SQL Server and especially if your job includes DBA tasks it is very likely that you have run into situations when you had to take a bunch of scripts (maybe tenths of them and maybe hundreds) and execute them in a certain order one after the other against a database. It is a tedious task to say the least. Now imagine if you had to do the same thing for 10 servers or 100 servers then you are really in trouble - there comes a point when it will be more efficient for you to sit down and write an application that will help you automate the process then do this job even once.

Well, you don't have to go through that annoying process anymore - with Script Executor, in just minutes, you can configure a highly complex scenario involving hundreds of scripts and tenths of target servers after which your highly complex deployment will require just one click or even none if you use the command line utility.

Download Script Executor now and see for yourself why we are so excited about it!

Where do MySQL users congregate?

We are kind of new to the MySQL world and are trying to figure out what are THE "places" to go if you want to reach MySQL users. Our tools are primarily SQL Server tools but we have just released a new tool, Script Executor that supports MySQL as well. The tool in a nutshell allows the user to execute Sql Scripts against multiple MySQL databases – it is a great tool for any database administrator or developer that works with MySQL. We are looking for two things:

• users who would be willing to review the product
• web destinations where we should advertise

So, if you are either someone interested in reviewing Script Executor or someone who knows where we should advertise please email us at our info address on our xsqlsoftware.com domain or simply put a comment here.

The Script Executor you have been waiting for

We have just released Script Executor 3 with support for SQL Server and MySQL - deploying your Sql Scripts to multiple target servers has never been easier.

The previos version of Script Executor has been renamed to "Script Executor Community Edition" and will continue to be available free of charge from our website.

Check the new Script Executor out - you will be impressed!

Download your free trial now: http://www.xsql.com/download/script_executor/

Best way to compare data in two SQL Server databases

So you need to compare the data in two SQL Server databases – maybe just the data in certain tables, maybe certain rows only and maybe you are just interested in certain columns. And what if the tables you need to compare don’t have a primary key defined (well, they all should but it is not rare to see cases when they don’t) how can you approach the task? A quick search on google will reveal an abundance of tools all claiming to do what you need so how do you know which one to pick?

We have made the task simple for you. We have tested every single one of those tools and the bad news is that with the majority of them you would be wasting your time. There are only very few that do the job right and we are happy and proud to say that xSQL Data Compare is the best tool you will find in terms of breadth of functionality it provides, flexibility it gives the user, performance with large databases and last but not lease cost. No, you don’t have to take our word for it – we have thousands of very happy users the majority of which have not had to pay a dime for it. You see, xSQL Data Compare is completely free for SQL Server Express with no restrictions and it is also free for other editions of SQL Server as long as the databases being compared don’t have more than a certain number of objects.

Here are some highlights of xSQL Data Compare:

• You can compare the data in two sql server databases or just select tables in those databases;
• You can map tables to be compared any way you want regardless of the table names;
• If xSQL Data Compare can’t find a predefined unique key on a table it allows you to define it on the fly as a combination of one ore more columns in that table;
• You can set filters on each table if you wish to compare only a subset of the rows;
• You can include or exclude columns from the comparison;
• You can choose to use bulk insert for the synchronization if you expect that a large number of rows will need to be inserted in the target table.

xSQL Data Compare supports SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2000.

You can download your copy from: http://www.xsql.com/download/sql_server_data_compare/

Documenting your databases – one tool does it all

Documenting anything is usually a painful task that everybody talks about but no one likes to do. I have seen one client after another with virtually no database documentation and no awareness of the incredible amount of time that especially newcomers spend on understanding how the objects relate to each other, how the data is stored, and what kind of constraints they need to be aware of!

Here is a perfect excuse that I have heard way too often: “by the time we are done documenting things have already changed so the documentation becomes outdated before it is even completed”. That might have been true in the distant past but not any more. With the right tool you can document your databases like SQL Server, DB2, Oracle, MySQL, Informix virtually any platform, in minutes – you can even create a job that automatically updates the documentation every day. One of the best tools out there to do the job is xSQL Documenter which allows you to simultaneously generate compiled CHM and / or HTML documentation for all your databases.

What’s even better, a great tool like this does not cost a fortune – for less than $200 you will get an incredible tool that will save your organization hundreds of hours of work.

xSQL Documenter supports the following platforms: SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, MySQL, Informix IDS, Sybase ASE, Sybase SQL Anywhere, PostgreSQL, Access, VistaDB, ENEA Polyhedra;

You can download your copy of xSQL Documenter from http://www.xsql.com/download/database_documenter/