Acces to SQL guidence?

OK I have been trying on my own to move from Access to SQL express/Developer. I have not found much in the way of guidence. Any suggestions? I would rank myself as fairly advanced with Access but just a newby to the SQL products... I keep blasting into walls and issues in the SQL world and would rather learn from someone elses' hardship rather than re-invent what has been undoubtably been already discovered.

I do fairly advanced reports and Large imports, Hence the need for developer rather than express, since the express import facility is hopelessly crippled. Even the developer SSIS is not well doccumented and seems pretty buggy and hard to use, even with the wizzards, As for reports.... well I'm expecting that to be a fairly had road to climb also...

Your are in a common position so rest assured many of us have been there. One of the easiest things I tend to do in this situation is learn as the need arises.

For example, creating relationships in access is very easy. You will find no such "GUI" way in sql server to create relationships. You can instead use management studio to do the same thing, but you just won't have the pretty layout that access has.

Also, if you are familiar with access you probably are aware of using an access project (intended I think for an SQL server type database situation).

So I would jump around this forum and other forums and find out the answers to the questions you need as these issues arise. You may want to pickup and intro to sql server book just to get an overview of the tools in sql server, but if you are the hands on type you may just want to jump right in. When you do install the dev edition you will (or may be -- I was) overwhelemd by the number of features installed. Keep it simple and focus on one task at a time.

E.g. create a simple db and run some queries and forget about configuring remote access and things like that at first.

I hope some of this was helpful. Do you have any specific questions about the change?

Ranginald|||

Thanks for the reply. Indeed that is exactly what I'm doing, jumping in that is. Its the way I've always learned the next new thing, in fact I've been involved with computers for more than 20 years now...Generally books are for sissies!

But on the other hand do you have any you would particularly single out as being good?

Here is some of my experience which may help the next person on this trail....I still don't get why someone has not addressed the topic more comprehensively since it seems that this is a path that many will be embarking on....

Actually I find the GUI table relationship thing to be fairly transferable to SQL management studio, so far. I miss being able to use vb in queries though...

so far I have a basic import going using ssis, (boy that wasn't easy) The SSIS tool seems very poorly supported, for instance I created an import job (via wizard), and just opened it and closed it with no modifications and it generated errors that it did not generate when first created by the wizard! Not to mention the terminations for truncated fields that there is no ready documentation how to accept rather than terminate.. So an import that took 5 minutes to do in Access took Hours to do in SSIS from a basic Flat text file.

I have imported a bunch of tables from access (easier)

I have done some derived tables and views, (not too hard) but I'm not to the advanced stuff yet.

Written one report, pretty basic and I'm thinking the SQL tool looks pretty hard relative to advanced reports in Access.

|||Glad I could help. I've always liked Wrox books. They are well written and to the point. I'm sure you know this already but whenever I want to buy a book I look on amazon for the user rating first to see if it's worth it.

Good luck.
Ranginald