How Can I Restore a Database to Different Files and ...............

Hi,

I have a database that over time has become spread over different files, file groups all of various sizes.

I want to restore this database to a different set of files/filegroups and evenly spread.

It appears that I can only resotore a database to number/of and size of files from which it was backed up..

I want to redistribute a 40GB file, using EMPTY is taking for ever and then eventually fails.

What can I do?

Thanks for your help

Try adding several new data files, then doing a shrink-empty on the big file to get it to be spread out to the new files. If the big data file is your primary data file, that will not work.

Suggestion two is to Rebuild the clustered index for several of your larger tables into the new files. This will move the data.

How can I parse text held in MS SQL 2005 text field

Hi,
I been reading various web pages trying to figure out how I can extract some simple information from the XML below, but at present I cannot understand it.

I have a MS SQL 2005 database with which contains a field of type text (external database so field type cannot be changed to XML)
The text field in the database is similar to the one below but I have simplified it by remove many of the unneeded tags in the <before> and <after> blocks. I also reformatted it to show the structure (original had no spaces or returns)

For each text field in the SQL table contain the XML I need to know the OldVal and the NewVal.

<ProductMergeAudit>
<before>
<table name="table1" description="Test Desc">
<product id="OldVal">
</table>
</before>
<after>
<table name="table1" description="Test Desc">
<product id="NewVal">
</table>
</after>
</ProductMergeAudit>

Cast your TEXT to an XML datatype field and use:

SET

@.XML=CONVERT(XML,'<ProductMergeAudit>
<before>
<table name="table1" description="Test Desc">
<product id="OldVal"/>
</table>
</before>
<after>
<table name="table1" description="Test Desc">
<product id="NewVal"/>
</table>
</after>
</ProductMergeAudit>')
SELECT @.XML.value('(/ProductMergeAudit/before/table/product/@.id)[1]','varchar(50)'), @.XML.value('(/ProductMergeAudit/after/table/product/@.id)[1]','varchar(50)')

gives

OldVal NewVal

N.B. The line<product id="NewVal"/> had to have a / added at the end to make it valid XML.

|||

Thanks,
That work when selecting the value from a single row into a XML variable.