Access to the db in a BB hosted environment

Kevin Hardy

Hi -

We're on RE7 (in the BB hosted environment) and every month I have to go through this manual process of requesting a backup of our RE database, having it sent to my FTP, downloading it, and restoring it into our local environment so we can run ad-hoc queries that integrate our RE data with our other database systems (which can be queried directly from the source)


A simple example of this is just checking to see if all of our members in RE have accounts in our Box Office system for member level specific ticketing benefits.


Is there a better/more effecient way to do this? Ideally I wish there was a way to directly query our live RE database (or a mirrored read-only copy) via ODBC, or some kind of API access (that's only a NXT thing, right?)  but even somehow automating the whole request backup -> landing in my FTP would help out immensely.


Anyone have any ideas?


Thanks everyone.

Aaron Rothberg

Hi Kevin-


I don't have a solution, but I do have a question.

 

|> and restoring it into our local environment

How is it you are able to do this? I would like to do something similar, but have not been able to. My understanding is that once you sign the contract to become hosted, you are no longer entitled to the stand-alone software and to-do what you are doing, you would need a stand-alone copy of Raiser's Edge and that copy must be patched to the same level of the server hosting your database.


Inquiring minds want to know!

 

Kevin Hardy

Aaron Rothberg:

Hi Kevin-


I don't have a solution, but I do have a question.

 

|> and restoring it into our local environment

How is it you are able to do this? I would like to do something similar, but have not been able to. My understanding is that once you sign the contract to become hosted, you are no longer entitled to the stand-alone software and to-do what you are doing, you would need a stand-alone copy of Raiser's Edge and that copy must be patched to the same level of the server hosting your database.


Inquiring minds want to know!

 

 

Hi Aaron - you may not be entitled to the stand-alone front end RE software (GUI), but you're entitled to at least one backup copy of the back end database per month. So basically, after you request it (if you're a site admin) a .BAK file will be sent to your BB hosted FTP space which you can then download  and use to restore / create a RE new database in your local MS SQL Server environment. From there you can basically perform any specialized query on your database. It's a pretty good option for creating reports & integrating with other datasets that you can't reach from the hosted environment, but back to your point, you cannot run the RE GUI on this backup DB copy.


The drawbacks here though are:

1) The limitation on how often I can request a copy. (I can't build applications/reports from this dataset that require live reporting)

2) Having to manually request, wait, download and then restore in the local environment.  (We're all about automation here and this process is faaaar from ideal - especially when I go on vacation )


I hope this explains it a little further... if not, ask away!

For your reference - here's an article about requesting a backup: 
https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/41253

Aaron Rothberg

Ah, you're doing all of your work out of SSMS. That makes sense. Thanks for clarifying!

Jim Egan

Old thread, but the topic is exactly what I was going to ask about.


I'm the architect of our in-house data warehouse. I've been asked to bring Raiser's Edge data into the warehouse so it can be integrated and available to our reporting team. Specifically, the dashboard that the Board of Trustees are currently using, needs to have a fundraising section populated. This is just a start.


Almost all of our data is pulled by our ETL tool directly from the source using a database connection. Some smaller systems provide data to us by dropping flat files into our FTP server.


What automated access methods are available to get the Raiser's Edge data?


Thanks,

Jim