Saturday, September 29, 2007

The Source is Ready

On a number of occasions, our ETL applications needed to determine whether a SQL Server database has come back online after being restored from a backup. Such requirement arises when the systems we are sourcing from create copy of their data and restore it onto a separate server dedicated to all downstream consumption. These source systems are often mission-critical or LOB applications that restrict direct ETL operations - fearing performance impact on user queries.

A quick and simple way to find out the availability of a SQL Server database is to use the DATABASEPROPERTYEX function. This T-SQL function returns the current setting of the specified database option or property for the specified database. The SQL is listed below.

The WHILE loop checks to see if the "status" of the "SourceDB" database is online and available for query, if not, it waits for a minute then checks again.

To maximize reusability and uniformity of our ETL implementation, we wraps this piece of code in its own separate SSIS or DTS package. The package in turn can be executed as first step of a job or within another package.

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