P4 to MS SQL

[sanstete]

How good is the out of the box mapping for this? Are there good reasons for changing the mapping or is it satisfactory to go with the oob mappings asis?

TIA

[outlance]

Hi,

it depends....

OOB mapping maps array fields to separate tables (each array line is one record in array table). This results in a lot of tables...

Pro: you can search and report for content of arrays

Alternatively you could map array fields to BLOB (CLOB, etc), but this does not allow you to search for content (it's stored as binary data in database).

To reduce the number of tables and fields in database (for performance reasons) you should map all unused fields to "nulltable" (check the guide for RDBMS conversion) and all fields that you do not want to report for (and search) to BLOB fields...

It makes sense to convert to SQL after working some time productively with your system, because then you have "realistic" data in your database and the conversion process checks the required field length for you.

There's a lot work to do, because P4 does work with a real good performance, even if you have unkeyed queries - SQL does not... so you need to check sc.alert.log for warnings and check all inboxes, stored queries and search formats and remove all fields that result to an unkeyed query....

An experienced database administrator should assist you when tuning the database - the conversion guide is a real good start ....

Hope it helps

Lars

[sanstete]

Thanks. Is it possible to quantify the performance gains?

I am sure I will be asked to justify the effort in changing the mappings against the benefits achieved.