I have a meeting tomorrow to discuss a number of deployments we have in the next couple of weeks. One thing to note is that all installations come with their own set of problems and I don't always have the answers. However, preparation is key; as they say - "pathetic preparation makes for a piss poor presentation".

One thing I'm going to try is a bit of brainstorming. I'm going to draw up each installation on a white-board and we'll list up anything that could possibly go wrong. From that we should be able to plan for nearly every eventuality. Hopefully it won't be a too depressing experience .

The main stay of my deployment plans is practise. If you have done it in the office without a customer breathing down your neck then the real thing is usually much easier. We try and get hold of a backup from the customer as they usually have datasets containing unforeseen combinations of data (especially as the source database doesn't have any constraints - shame on you Cisco!).

The last thing that commonly trips us up is firewalls - most of our customers are in retail or banking so security is sometimes taken to the extreme. It would be costly for us to reproduce their firewall configuration (one customer has DMZ's around each server), so a quick tip is to use personal firewalls such as ZoneAlarm to lock down your test servers similar to a DMZ deployment.

It's August and it's hot so, by tradition, the British public head to the beach. As a slight alternative I went to Hurst Castle which stands on a spit of land between the south cost and the Isle of Wight. It was originally built by Henry VIII as part of a coastal defence chain. The castle was used right though to the Second World War with various upgrades and additions along the way.

As the castle on a shingle spit there is no road and you have to walk 1½ miles down loose rocks. Very tiring but worth it. I took the camera and have loads of pictures so see what its all about.

I noticed this whilst browsing the SQL Server 2005 online help. It creates a permanent (until you DROP SYNONYM) alias to an object in SQL Server. This could be very useful in shortening the amount SQL you need to type. Imagine you have a remote database containing a schema and table. You can either:

SELECT * FROM REMOTE_SERVER.SCHMEA_NAME.THE_TABLE_IN_QUESTION

Or:

CREATE SYNONYM THE_TABLE
    FOR REMOTE_SERVER.SCHMEA_NAME.THE_TABLE_IN_QUESTION
GO
SELECT * FROM THE_TABLE

Useful? Yes, but even more so when you need to use a database that has daft object naming conventions like Remedy managed systems.

CREATE SYNONYM Customers
    FOR dbo.C0183
GO
SELECT * FROM Customers

I've just started reading "Agile Project Management" by Jim Highsmith and it's looking very promising. Whilst reading chapter one the point slapped me like the Tango Man - it's the way in which agile projects are different to others.

Traditional project are all about deciding what you are going to build and then carrying out your plan whereas with agile projects you have a plan but it's about how, not what, you build. In fact the key point made by Jim is that agile projects are all about experimentation and adaption.

He cites a comparison with the pharmaceutical industry which makes things very clear. A few years ago they used to sit down and design molecules for a specific task whereas now they synthesise thousands of molecules at a time and use automated testing to screen for desired properties. The results are fed into a database which the scientists use to make their next steps. This rapid experimentation enables them to generate new drugs much faster even though they don't know the end result until it presents itself.

Consider this in the context of software development. Rapid cycles of experimentation with unit tests to screen the results and ensure forward motion. These two concepts enable a project to progress in a more efficient way than if a solution were "designed".

man·age·ment

The act, manner, or practice of handling, supervision, or control.

lead·er·ship

Capacity or ability to lead, give guidance and direction.

There is a big difference between the two.

Bradley Greathead, a fellow Exony employee has started blogging. He is responsible for our application server and, in particular, the middle tier development. I foresee lots of useful posts - subscribed!

I'm in the middle of writing a custom DTS transform to perform fast key lookups for dimensioning facts as they are streamed into the database. I'll post more when I have completed it but for now I'm disappointed to find out that there is no way to provide any sort of user interface beyond the standard property dialog.

This strikes me as a major oversight on Microsoft's part considering they managed to do it for custom tasks. I have to question why they didn't add the capability. A number of the built in transforms have custom dialogs that appear when you click the properties button so it must be possible.

There are two reasons that I can think of. The first is that there is a way to provide custom transform dialogs and this is how they implement their own transform UIs but the interface is undocumented. The second is that the main transform task also implements all the UIs for the transforms.

Subscribers to the "evil empire" theory will probably favour the first reason. I can't agree because keeping the interface private would only benefit Microsoft if they were selling their own custom transforms. If the second is true then they are responsible for some pretty poor design. This is especially true because they managed to get the design right for custom tasks. The teams can't be that big that communication breaks down so it must be those little private offices they all have.

Maybe someone on the DTS team can enlighten me?