Extract from Progress Database to SQL Server

Question

I'm looking for the best approach (or a couple of good ones to choose from) for extracting from a Progress database (v10.2b). The eventual target will be SQL Server (v2008). I say "eventual target", because I don't necessarily have to connect directly to Progress from within SQL Server, i.e. I'm not averse to extracting from Progress to a text file, and then importing that into SQL Server.

My research on approaches came up with scenarios that don't match mine;

• Migrating an entire Progress DB to SQL Server
• Exporting entire tables from Progress to SQL Server
• Using Progress-specific tools, something to which I do not have access

I am able to connect to Progress using ODBC, and have written some queries from within Visual Studio (v2010). I've also done a bit of custom programming against the Progress database, building a simple web interface to prove out a few things.

So, my requirement is to use ODBC, and build a routine that runs a specific query on a daily basis daily. The results of this query will then be imported into a SQL Server database. Thanks in advance for your help.

Update
After some additional research, I did find that a Linked Server is what I'm looking for. Some notes for others working with SQL Server Express;

• If it's SQL Server Express that you are working with, you may not see a program on your desktop or in the Start Menu for DTS. I found DTSWizard.exe nested in my SQL Server Program Files (for me, C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\Binn), and was able to simply create a shortcut.
• Also, because I'm using the SQL Express version of SQL Server, I wasn't able to save the Package I'd created. So, after creating the Package and running it once, I simply re-ran the package, and saved off my SQL for use in teh future.

Answer 1

Can you connect to the Progress DB using OLE? If so, you could use SQL Server Linked Server to bypass the need for extracting to a file which would then be loaded into SQL Server. Alternately, you could extract to Excel and then import from Excel to SQL Server.

Answer 2

Bit of a late answer, but in case anyone else was looking to do this...

You can use linked server, but you will find that the performance won't be as good as directly connecting via the ODBC drivers, also the translation of the data types may mean that you cannot access some tables. The linked server might be handy though for exploring the data.

If you use SSIS with the ODBC drivers (you will have to use ADO.NET data sources) then this will perform the most efficiently, and as well you should get more accurate data types (remember that the data types within progress can change dynamically).

If you have to extract a lot of tables, I would look at BIML to help you achieve this. BIML (Business Intelligence Markup Language) can help you create dynamically many SSIS packages on the fly which can be called from a master package. This master package can then be scheduled or run ad-hoc and so can any of the child packages as needed.