Maxim - Acknowledge communications within 24 hours

A visualization to remind of the need to acknowledge communications within 24 hours

This is an reminder of a maxim from Harry Shapiro's Legacy, a book of business wisdom by a friend, previous client, and mentor, Dr. Irving David Shapiro.  His Maxim specifically advises to "Always return every electronic communication...the same day you receive it".  In this day and age, you may receive communication at all hours from various time zones, so 'same day' can be tough to measure, but within 24 hours at least reminds you of the theme if you wake up to messages from the previous day.

Maxim - Three email rule

A visualization of the three email rule

 

In a recent office move, there was occasion for me to take down a bunch of hand-written post-it notes that I had written myself to remind of various professional maxims or just general good work habits.  Figured rather than just put them back up at the new desk, would take a few moments to convert them into a more preservable format.  The goal is to be relatively visual so they are in my face, the words are often too easy to ignore.  But I'm certainly not anywhere decent in drawing, so block diagrams are my best play at something legible.

The maxims themselves are generally adaptations, synthesis or snippets of my reading, conversations, training or other knowledge.  I will try to credit them when possible.  This one is a generality I've seen in a few different forms, including a 2-mail rule.  Thought that sometimes refers to the request-response work flow, so i find the '3' email rule easy to apply by counting the number of messages in a thread. 

Connecting to Oracle from SQL Server - Initial steps

Have started down the path of connecting to an Oracle database from an SQL Server.  The Oracle database will be a key enterprise system, replacing a couple of legacy systems that currently are used to source a data warehouse.

Not fully complete in terms of integrating or loading data via an ETL tool, but first things first.  I expect to have futher posts as I work or relearn nuances of Oracle, syntax, etc.

To start with what ended up working:

Installed the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Client (11.2.0.1.0) for Microsoft Windows (32-bit) from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/downloads/112010-win32soft-098987.html

Used the Adminstrator option during installation to get additional tools for Oracle, including a Net Manager that managed Oracle-specific connections.  My gut feeling, of course is that this is hefty footprint (~600 Mb install) on a server to mostly get ODBC drivers, but thus far, haven't been able to determine what's needed and not needed.

After installing, in the install locations there was a seperate executable called odbc_install to run to get the ODBC drivers to show up

"Installed" (really just copy-pasted) Database Browser Portable to a server directory.  This tool provides a rudimentary, but platform-independent viewer to the database.  Oracle has various viewers in its client package, but at least some require 'Java' to be installed, but I'm hesitant to do so on a server.  The Windows server and SQL server have their own set of maintenance issues with updates and service packs, and since using the Oracle-specific viewers won't be used on a regular basis in production that seems like an extra maintenance vector.

Was able to use Database Browser Portable was able to connect to the Oracle database two ways:
1. Setting up an Data Source Name (DSN) in the ODBC settings.  In Database Browser Portable, choose an ODBC setting
2. In Database Browser Portable, choose 'Oracle'.  Now when doing so, it appears there is a drop-down for TNS names...  Mine didn't list any, but typing in manually what I new the TNS name to be worked

Thus far, not seeing any technical difference in Database Browser Portable between the two techniques, so suffice to say, i'll lean toward the Oracle connection type, to avoid the dependency upon the DSN.  Not sure yet if the DSN will be required, or even just come in handy, when designing the actual ETL packages i'll need to build.


What didn't work for me so far to get to this point were 'installing' only the 'InstantClient' from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/instant-client/index-097480.html.  'Installing' is in quotes again because it appears the basic technique is to unzip various modules that represent the Instant Client, and copy them to a directory.  Then only the aforementioned 'ODBC_install' is the only actual 'install' on the server.  Using this technique to get the base instant client and ODBC drivers would lead to a ~100-200 MB directory: still a large footprint for simple ODBC access to database, but especially since nothing is 'installed', this seemed hopeful.  Ran through the steps in this article, http://celemotan.wordpress.com/2008/10/22/instantclient/, though, including manually setting environment variables and wasn't able to get an ODBC connection to test successfully against the name I was using for the TNS name. 

An post on the support forum for Portable Database Browser asserted it would be possible to get it up an running with only the InstantClient in a directory.  This was intriguing as it would imply nothing needs to be installed, not even the ODBC driver, and perhaps then this native access technique could be used in SSIS or similar.  In my situation, wasn't able to get any combination of server, port and service name working. http://www.dbsoftlab.com/database-browser/1161-database-browser-on-oracle-instant-client.html

SQL Server 2008 R2 in Virtual PC

After some travails, build a Virtual PC containing SQL Server 2008 R2, for testing, learning, and demo.

Ran into some issues installing in the VPC environment What ended up working was the lowest tech approach possible.

- Capture the ISO on the guest
○ failed - apparently a known issue with the iso capture feature in VPC
○ ○ Listed as a Virtual PC issue

- Mount the iso through virtual clone drive on the host, expose that drive letter to the guest as an Optical Disk
○ Install directly
§ Failed - unknown error during SQL install
○ Copy the files from the virtual drive to local
§ Failed - "DOS errors" when copying
○ Sync Toy to perform an incremental copy down to the guest
§ Would lock up SyncToy and freeze the entire VPC
- Extract ISO on the host, create a mapped drive to the extracted files on the host; expose that to the guest through integration feature
○ Copy files from the host drive
§ Slow…
§ Eventually get 'Unexpected errors' the device is not connected.
○ Sync Toy to perform an incremental copy down to the guest
§ Would lock up SyncToy and freeze the entire VPC
- Burn a DVD of the ISO, load that into the host, expose that drive to the guest OS
○ Success

Project Kanban

Setup a Project Kanban for my team's semi-annual governance - my biggest usage of the technique to date that is multi-party and scoped to a single project.

Matrixed by Deliverable on top and subject area on the left. We do a similar family of activities for each of 6 areas.

Here are the first 3 weeks. The whole effort is scheduled for completion September 10, 2011

Update: Added a fourth picture. Day before launch

Update: Added a picture at the end of launch day

SkyDrive try

My experience with SkyDrive has been a drastic failure so far. I've been trying to put my toe in the water by moving a folder of IT reference articles, presentations, and policy docs that I've carried around for 10+ years up to the SkyDrive. Figured my access was usually 10% editing (or less) and 90% reading, so this would let me get used to having the files in the cloud without having synch be a major concern.

Of course, I'm too impatient to upload the files/folders through the web interface, so i immediately set out to get Windows file system access, and use a sync tool to at least push the files one-way.

It appears to be possible to Map a network drive (How to Map SkyDrive as a Network Drive), using a CodePlex project - SkyDrive Simple Viewer to nav your SkyDrive. Started by doing a Window Copy-Paste, of course it's dreadfully slow and errors out on Visio diagram, among other file types i didn't take note of.

So, on to using SyncToy to copy the files up - at least it will run unobtrusively, and I can review which files were exceptions. SyncToy 2.0 fails immediately upon running the sync, so i look into it... SyncToy 2.1 is out - i had never needed to upgrade... it doesn't fail right away... but every. file. failed. "Exception during run: The FileSyncProvider received an unexpected error while applying a synchronized change. Creating new file {File Name}", and the sync task stops.

Will park this for now... further updates as I retrench and rethink how to attack this

Source Code Control - SQL Server/Business Intelligence Stack

One of the items weighing on my mind is that I have not introduced a true source code control process for my team working primarily with the SQL Server business intelligence stack. A source code control process is not need on this team to 'control' or 'audit' the work among the team, but provide some basic tools for working together:







1. The ability to work on source code, being confident you are working against the latest and greatest version your team has been able to put together.



2. The ability to develop source code, and review your work for quality before contributing to the team, and be confident your work will not accidentally override another, or be overridden



3. The ability to review changes history on code regardless of author, to investigate behaviour at past point and/or rule out "code changes" as the cause of a problem




Current methods




4. All dev staff RDP into the development server to work on core, server-side projects - especially SSAS and core SSRS



5. A few of us tend to work locally on SSIS, SSRS, and SQLscripts, then use sync toy to move files up to a file server… use synctoy on the development server to sync files from the share drive down



6. All staff work on SQL scripts from their own machines, and kind of hope we don't collide with each other







Based on inquiring in and around my organization, and also bringing it up during 'group therapy' session at the Sacramento SQL Server User Group, options included Visual Source Safe, CVS (which based on rudimentary research, actually SVN would be preferred), and Git, which I've been reading about mostly from the open source world. Upon researching Visual Source Safe, learned this old file-based standby is being deprecated by Microsoft in favor of their true server product - Team Foundation Server)





Alternatives





Visual Source Safe































Advantages	Disadvantages
Integration with Visual Studio (for SSIS, SSRS and SSAS)	License cost/ Procurement process required
Uses existing file server	Requires a checkout-edit-checkin workflow
	Is actually in de-support by Microsoft in favor of Team Foundation Server (TFS)








SVN (client-side tool - TortoiseSVN)


































Advantages	Disadvantages
Free/Open Source	Lack of integration with Visual Studio (for SSIS, SSRS and SSAS) - 3rd party tool available for $49/seat
Supports an Edit-Merge-Commit workflow
Uses existing file server





http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/SourceControl_VSNET.aspx








Git (client-side tool - mySysGit)








































Advantages	Disadvantages
Free/Open Source	Lack of integration with Visual Studio (for SSIS, SSRS and SSAS)
Supports an Edit-Merge-Commit workflow
Uses existing file server?	Appears to be more geared to storing a project on the open internet (i.e. http:)
	Focuses a lot more on branching and merging - good for bazaar-type development, but not as much value for a small focused (relatively) team








Team Foundation Server


































Advantages	Disadvantages
Integration with Visual Studio	Not currently available in our organization. Another shop is evaluating it - need to assess and leverage their efforts, as well as determine licensing
Other dev lifecycle tools
Integration with SharePoint

Project War Room

Finalized a project for CDCR - a Court Compliance Reporting Portal - wrapped up the project war room. See, not only do I see projects as having a defined start and end, but a defined location as well. This was the war room for the duration of the project, and of course, it was left cleaner then when it started:

During Use	After Use

Recommended SSIS blog

Been following a blog series on SSIS, with recent topic:
31 Days of SSIS - Folder Structures

My response:
Can tell you use an organized layout, and some of the concepts under workfiles I hadn’t
considered before.

What do I do differently?
Well the concept of WorkFiles is outside of the ‘SSIS’ hierachy, in fact by the time it gets to production on an entirely different drive. One reason is that the WorkFiles lives on whether another developer was to follow me and structure packages differently… or for that matter a different ETL tool was used, or even reverted to importing ‘manually’. Second reason is the source control and permissions alluded to. Non-developers in my environment need access to the WorkFiles, on a regular basis to drop off files, and in rarer situations, to see what files have been imported. Confuses me to much to have this mixed in with folders that need source code control.

Under my equivalant to WorkFiles/Project, there is a ‘Samples’ folder which contains samples (i.e. templates) of what the files are ‘supposed’ to look like. Especially with Excel files, i’ve found a groove where if the package uses a file under ‘WorkFiles/Project/Samples’ at design, then have it loop through ‘WorkFiles/Project’ at execute time. This can be challenging though if the ‘Samples’ get out of sync with the package.