In the last entry, we looked at basic querying with a web browser and viewing service metrics.
This entry will examine administrative commands and bulk uploading options using the SDS administration utility (st.exe) which is part of the SDS SDK.
Migrating Data To SQL Data Services
There’s really no fun in discussing all the excellent benefits of SQL Data Services without getting some rich data into the cloud, is there?
So our next step is to upload some meaningful data so we can start playing with more complex queries. We’re going to look at two avenues to satisfy a bulk upload of data. The first is the admin tool which ships with the SDS SDK.
The second option is to make our own tool and use the SOAP interface to upload the data. We’ll explore this in another entry shortly.
Using the st.exe Admin Utility
The utility, st.exe, ships with the SDS SDK. It is a .net application designed to be run from the command line. The emphasis is on speed and efficiency, most operations are incredibly quick (by comparison to the other options). The important commands will be covered in this article.
Important command line operations for the st.exe utility:
| Command | Comment |
| create | Create an Authority, Container or Entity |
| loadbatch | Bulk create Containers or Entities using parallel sessions |
| backup | Save (download) all data from an Authority |
| restore | Restore data (previously backed up) to an Authority (which must exist) |
Additionally, there are a number of other parameters which are necessary to be used in conjunction with the select commands listed above. They are listed in the table below.
| Option | Comment | Usage |
| user | Specifies the username credential | /user:(application name) |
| http | Forces communication over port 80 (HTTP) instead of secure 443 (HTTPS) – recommended for querying non-sensitive data |
/http |
| https | Forces communication across secure port 443 (HTTPS) encrypted (slower) |
/https |
| password | Used in conjunction with username to specify connection credentials | /password:<password> |
| parallel | Determines number of parallel sessions to use (for bulk operations) | /parallel:<number> |
| verbose | Log additional information to the standard output (useful for debugging) |
/verbose |
| soap | Force to use SOAP for data interface | /soap |
| rest | Force to use REST for data interface | /rest |
| overwrite | Used to specify automatic overwrite of any existing entities | /overwrite |
