Microsoft SQL Server - Micetro - 25.2.0

Micetro Installation Guide
ft:locale
en-US
Product name
Micetro
Version
25.2.0
Note: It is recommended to keep the network latency between the SQL Server and Micetro Central below 5 milliseconds. Latency above this level can lead to performance issues.

Micetro does not automatically perform index maintenance or database backups. It is recommended to have a database administrator set up a scheduled task to maintain indexes and regularly back up the database and transaction logs, (when using the Full recovery model).

Micetro requires the creation of a new database on your server with a case-sensitive and accent-sensitive collation. For SQL Server 2019 or later, it is recommended to use a UTF-8 collation, such as Latin1_General_100_CS_AS_KS_WS_SC_UTF8. For earlier SQL Server versions or Micetro versions 11.0 and below, the recommended collation is SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS.

Note: Multiple ODBC drivers were deprecated as part of the Micetro 25.1.0 release. We recommend using the Microsoft ODBC driver version 17 or 18 for SQL Server. This is required when using UTF-8 encoded collations. Otherwise, Micetro will connect to a database using older drivers, which could result in undefined behavior or errors, e.g., "invalid precision value".

The CreateDatabase.sql script can be used to create a blank database for Micetro with the recommended configurations. The script also creates a user account called micetroDBUser, but you must change the password before running the script.

Running the script will result in:

  • The creation of a user named micetroDBUser with a given password.
  • The establishment of an empty database named micetro with the Latin1_General_100_CS_AS_KS_WS_SC_UTF8 collation.
Note: The default recovery model for the created database is Simple. If you want to use a Full recovery model, it is necessary to set up a transaction log backup job.

Configuring connection parameters

Note: To improve your compatibility with Microsoft SQL Server, you need to install the ODBC driver on the Central server`.

For Micetro Central on Windows, you can choose from two authentication methods:

  1. Windows Authentication:

    Ensure that Micetro Central runs under an Active Directory service account that is a member of the local administrators group.

    Here's an example of how the database section of the preferences.cfg file should look for the Windows Authentication method. Note that the databaseusername tag must be present and the value must be set to an empty string.

    <database value="MSSQL"/>
<databaseserver value="<name or ip of the SQL server>\<instance name, e.g., SQLEXPRESS>@<name of database, e.g., micetro/>
<databaseusername value=""/>
  2. Microsoft SQL Server Authentication with Username and Password:

    For this method, configure the database section of the preferences.cfg file as follows:

    <database value="MSSQL"/>
<databaseserver value="<name or IP of the SQL server>\<instance name, e.g., SQLEXPRESS>@<database name, e.g., micetro"/>
<databaseusername value="micetroDBUser"/>
<databasepassword value="plaintext:DBPASSWORD"/>

    With this approach, you can use a dedicated SQL Server user for authentication. The plaintext: prefix keyword in the database password value allows the password to be entered in plaintext, which Micetro Central will encrypt during the initial startup. In the example, the DBPASSWORD is the secret.

Connecting to the MS SQL database

After configuring the preferences, restart the Micetro Central service. This connects Micetro Central to your newly created database. The database schema is created during the first connection.

Restarting Micetro Central

After making changes to the preferences.cfg file, restart the Windows service Men and Mice Central. You can restart the service through the Windows Services snap-in (services.msc). This enables it to use the changed connection information.

If there are any database connection issues, the service will fail to start. Check the Micetro Central startup log for connection errors. The startup log file is located in the Micetro Central data directory at C:\ProgramData\Men and Mice\Central\logs.