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SQL Server CDC readers

For an introduction to reading from SQL Server, see SQL Server.

Striim offers two CDC readers to read data from your SQL Server databases in real time: MS SQL Reader and MSJet. MSJet’s primary advantage over MS SQL Reader is higher throughput and lower resource consumption at the source database server (compute, memory, and disk I/O). On the other hand, MS SQL Reader can support older versions of SQL Server databases and a wider variety of cloud SQL databases.

The following table provides an overview of the two adapters' capabilities:

Feature comparison: MS SQL Reader and MSJet

MS SQL Reader

MSJet

supported versions

  • SQL Server Enterprise 2008

✓

  • SQL Server Enterprise 2012

✓

  • SQL Server Enterprise 2017 in SQL Server 2012 compatibility mode

✓

  • SQL Server Enterprise 2014

✓

  • SQL Server Standard and Enterprise 2016 through SP1

✓

✓ requires SP2

  • SQL Server Standard and Enterprise 2016 SP2 or higher

✓

✓

  • SQL Server Standard and Enterprise 2017

✓

✓

  • SQL Server Standard and Enterprise 2019

✓

✓

  • SQL Server Standard and Enterprise 2022

✓

✓

Supported cloud database services

  • Amazon RDS for SQL Server

✓

✓

tables with binary or varbinary values ≥64KB cannot be read

in Mine mode

  • Azure SQL Database Managed Instance

✓

tables with binary or varbinary values ≥64KB cannot be read

only in Mine mode

can read from

  • CDC change tables

✓

  • transaction log backup on disk (reading from backups on tape, virtual devices, mirror backup, or Azure Storage is not supported)

✓

via archive log

✓

  • secondary database in an Always On availability group

✓

  • backup logs encrypted with SQL Server Transport Data Encryption (TDE)

only in Mine mode

✓

only in Mine mode (known issue DEV-42364)

key features

  • DML operations replicable in target

INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE

INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, BEGIN, COMMIT

  • schema evolution when writing to databases and data warehouses

for 11g to 18c only, not for PDB / CDB

✓

  • preserve order of operations in transactions

when Transaction Support is True (see MS SQL Reader properties for more information)

✓

  • transaction support

✓

✓

  • uncommitted transaction support

✓

  • Striim-side transaction caching

✓

  • recovery

✓

✓

  • quiesce

✓

  • bidirectional replication

✓

✓

  • reader does not need to run on the SQL Server host

✓

when Mode is Mine

summary of supported data types (for full details, see SQL Server readers data type support and correspondence)

  • bigint, binary, bit, char, date, datetime, datetimeoffset, datetime2, decimal, float, image, int, money, nchar, ntext, numeric, nvarchar, nvarchar(max), real, rowversion, smalldatetime, smallint, smallmoney, text, time, timestamp, tinyint, udt, uniqueidentifier, varbinary, varbinary(max), varchar, varchar(max)

✓

✓

  • xml

✓

  • cursor, geography, geometry, hierarchyid, sql_variant, table

Striim provides wizards for creating applications that read from SQL Server and write to various targets. SeeCreating an application using a wizard for details.

To learn more about these CDC readers or purchase them, Contact Striim support.