# What are differences between Beats and jdbc plugin?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-differences-between-beats-and-jdbc-plugin/70654>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Created:** [January 5, 2017, 9:48am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-differences-between-beats-and-jdbc-plugin/70654 "2017-01-05T09:48:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Viven7512](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/c67d28/32.png) [@Viven7512](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Viven7512)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 9:48am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-differences-between-beats-and-jdbc-plugin/70654/1 "2017-01-05T09:48:18Z")

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Hi everybody , I am a newbie in the ES's wonderful world so please be indulgent.

I am thinking about a import and sync strategy for a microsoft sql data source and if I did not misunderstand, I can use the input plugins JDBC or Beats.

But I don't see what are the deeps differences between them,

what are their usefulness? When use one or other one?  
What are their benefits and their drawbacks?

Thank you if you can help me

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**Author:** ![ruflin](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/ruflin/32/3116_2.png) [@ruflin](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ruflin)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 2:06pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-differences-between-beats-and-jdbc-plugin/70654/2 "2017-01-05T14:06:12Z")

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Beats does not allow to import data from sql servers. Metricbeat can be used to monitor the stats of some service. What you are probably looking for is JDBC plugin for logstash: [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/plugins-inputs-jdbc.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/plugins-inputs-jdbc.html)

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [January 26, 2017, 9:48am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-differences-between-beats-and-jdbc-plugin/70654/3 "2017-01-26T09:48:17Z")

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