How do I create a working / editable version of my database?

Owned by Aaron Jackson, created
Last updated: Jul 18, 2024 by Laura Ward
2 min read

Introduction

HIC Data team will provide access to study folders in your workspace in read-only mode. This means you won’t be able to make any changes to the data. This has some advantages, such as being certain that the database provided remains in the original state - you can’t accidentally drop rows or entire tables. However, there are cases where you might need to add an additional table or column. For this reason, we also provide a “Working” database - this should have almost the same name as your data release, but with an additional suffix. We always provide the Working database in an empty state, so you can use it as you wish.

These instructions describe the process for creating a writable copy of your read-only database into your working database table.

 Instructions

These instructions use a fictional database provided by Microsoft called “AdventureWorks”. We will copy this into a read-write version called “AdventureWorks_Public”

  1. Open Microsoft SQL Management Studio and start a connection to the database server. This has been described in our article on

  2. Verify you can find your data release and working database in the list of databases on the left.

    Our “AdventureWorks2019” and “AdventureWorks2019_Working” databases shown in SQL Management Studio.

  3. Right click on your read-only database (e.g. AdventureWorks2019), navigate to the Tasks submenu and select Export Data.

    1. You will be prompted for connection details for the source database - these are the same as you used to open SQL Management Studio earlier. Once populated, click Next.

    2. Repeat this for the destination connection, selecting the target “_Working” database from the Database dropdown. You can then click Next.

    3. Leave the default “Copy data from one or more tables or views” selected and click Next.

    4. The next step asks which tables you want to copy. You can select just a few, or use the heading checkbox to select all. You can then click Next.

      Table selection for the Database Import/Export Wizard.

    5. This step is just asking whether to run immediately - leave selected and click Next, then click Finish and wait for the copy to finish.

The last step will take some time as the schema and individual rows are copied.

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