SQL Server
Fivetran supports SQL Server database as a destination.
NOTE: Fivetran supports SQL Server as both a database connector and a destination. Integrating your SQL Server as a destination is the same as integrating it as a database connector. See our SQL Server database documentation for more information.
SQL Server is not typically used as a destination because it is a row-based database more suited to transactional use-cases. Large analytical querying is much faster on columnar warehouses. SQL Server, however, can be effective as a warehouse for smaller data volumes.
Supported implementations
Fivetran supports connecting with four different SQL Server implementations:
IMPORTANT: We only support the Enterprise and Standard editions of SQL Server.
Type transformation mapping
The data types in your SQL Server database follow Fivetran's standard data type storage.
We use the following data type conversions:
| Fivetran Data Type | Destination Data Type |
|---|---|
| BOOLEAN | BIT |
| SHORT | SMALLINT |
| INT | INTEGER |
| LONG | BIGINT |
| BIGDECIMAL | DECIMAL |
| FLOAT | REAL |
| DOUBLE | DOUBLEPRECISION |
| LOCALDATE | DATE |
| LOCALDATETIME | DATETIME2 |
| INSTANT | DATETIMEOFFSET |
| STRING | NVARCHAR |
| JSON | NVARCHAR |
| BINARY | VARBINARY |
Setup guide
Follow our step-by-step setup guides for specific instructions on how to set up your SQL Server database as a destination:
Primary key column limitations
Fivetran has the following limitations on the size of primary key columns:
Fivetran imposes a limitation on the maximum size of a single STRING primary key column at 256 bytes.
SQL Server imposes limitations on the key columns. See Microsoft's documentation for a complete list of maximum capacity specifications for SQL Server.
Data load costs
Whether you are self-hosting SQL Server or using a managed service, you will not be charged extra when we load data into your database.
Collation
By default, Fivetran uses the latin1_general_bin collation for your SQL Server destination. The latin1_general_bin collation is case-sensitive. However, you can change the collation using {<col_name>} COLLATE {<collation_of_your_choice>} in your downstream queries while sorting or comparing your data. For example:
SELECT {<col_name>} FROM {<fivetran_replicated_table>}
ORDER BY {<col_name>} COLLATE {<collation_of_your_choice>};