Tuesday, May 7, 2013

ABCs of CDC with SSIS 2012 - Addendum

I have been presenting the "ABCs of CDC with SSIS 2012" session for a few months now at various User Groups and SQLSaturdays and I learn something new about CDC (Change Data Capture) and the other similar options available in SQL 2012 each time I present it. As I was searching for information the other day I discovered a feature that was delivered with the RTM (Release to Manufacture) version of SQL 2012 that I had not heard about before, Change Data Capture for Oracle by Attunity.

This feature is a way for SQL Server DBAs to get all of the benefits of CDC from Oracle databases. The executables for this feature are on the install media for SQL 2012 in the Tools\AttunityCDCOracle folder (available in both x64 and x86 versions). The 2 executables are AttunityOracleCdcDesigner.msi and AttunityOracleCdcService.msi. Both of these executables are installed on a Windows Server, not on the Oracle system itself (unless you are running Oracle on Windows). So the server that you are installing on needs to be able to connect to the Oracle database(s) that you are trying to capture data and changes on. The Service executable is the one that always runs on the Windows Server and pulls all of the changes from the Oracle database(s) to the Windows Server to be stored on a SQL Server instance in the same form that CDC on SQL Server stores changes. The Designer executable is the administration front-end for setting up the service, which will launch as an MMC (Microsoft Management Console) snap-in.

Once you have these changes in the SQL Server database, then you can use all of the same processes you use for SQL Server CDC data, including using the new CDC components in SSIS 2012.

For more details on getting this installed, this link will take you to the TechNet article covering this feature.

To see the applications in action, this link will take you to the video of a presentation done at PASS Summit 2011 by Matt Masson and representatives from Attunity (fast forward to around 10:50 to see this feature).

The best part of this is that since it is a built-in feature of SQL Server 2012, it's free to use with SQL Server 2012!