In today’s data-driven world, it is common to have the need for incremental data loading from a source to a target data store. This allows us to efficiently transfer only the changed data, reducing the time and resources required for data synchronization. In this article, we will explore how to achieve incremental data loading using Change Tracking in SQL Server.

What is Change Tracking?

Change Tracking is a lightweight solution in SQL Server that provides an efficient change tracking mechanism for applications. It allows us to track changes in data without the need for triggers or schema changes. Change tracking must be enabled for the database and tables that we want to track changes in.

Once change tracking is configured for a table, it records change information for each row modified by DML statements. The primary key of the tracked table along with the change information is recorded. Change tracking information is stored in an internal on-disk table, which is used by Change Tracking functions to determine the change version and the rows that have changed since a particular version.

Step-by-Step Process for Incremental Data Loading using Change Tracking

Let’s walk through the step-by-step process for incremental data loading using Change Tracking:

1. Enable Change Tracking for the database and tables
2. Create and populate the ChangeTrackingStore table
3. Add data to the source table
4. Create staging and final tables in the target database
5. Configure Integration Runtimes
6. Create Linked Services
7. Create datasets for the source and target tables
8. Create a pipeline
9. Create Lookup activities to retrieve change tracking version information
10. Create a Copy activity to copy the changed data
11. Create Stored Procedure activities to update the target table and change tracking version
12. Debug the pipeline for the initial data load
13. Check the data in the target table
14. Modify data in the source table
15. Debug the pipeline again for incremental data load
16. Check the data in the target table

By following these steps, we can achieve incremental data loading using Change Tracking in SQL Server. This approach is efficient, easy to implement, and does not require any schema changes or triggers.

Conclusion

Incremental data loading is a common requirement in data integration scenarios. Change Tracking in SQL Server provides a simple and efficient solution for tracking changes in data and performing incremental data loading. By enabling Change Tracking and following the step-by-step process outlined in this article, we can easily implement incremental data loading in our SQL Server environment.

Change Tracking is a powerful feature that simplifies the process of incremental data loading and helps us keep our target data store up-to-date with minimal effort. Whether we are working with an on-premise SQL Server or Azure SQL Database, Change Tracking can be a valuable tool in our data integration toolbox.