Sunday, October 05, 2003 | |
Source: Ming the Mechanic Flemming says- I'm trying to practice noticing patterns, and writing them down. Here's one. 12:16:46 PM trackback [] Articulate [] |
You haven’t really experienced sheer hell until you have to debug a DTS package. SQL Server development is something completely different from the traditional 4GL languages like VB and C#, you have to think in rows and columns and joins. A lot of 4GL programmers are forced or simply want to get into writing T/SQL Stored Procedures and realize that it is a whole new ballgame. But one that is easy to master if you put the time in. So a lot of beginning SQL Server programmers who came over from the 4GL side ask me often at conferences, “How do I debug a DTS package?” The answer is “You don’t.” (Oh we are all so spoiled by setting a breakpoint in Visual Studio.)
Microsoft has publicly announced some of the new DTS features of
First off, proper design of your package will only make debugging much easier. Use only Stored Procedures (with or without parameters) and if you have to use SQL dynamically utilize Views. This is because the more dependencies on “real” database objects, the easier it will be to track down your problem. Avoid ActiveX Scripts as much as you can-consider an Extended Stored Procedure that calls a DLL wrote yourself (or call the DLL with a CreateObject in your script if you must). For the actual debugging itself my advice to you is to take everything in steps. You can run each DTS package’s step individually just by right clicking on it in the designed and selecting “Execute Step” from the pop-up menu. That is the first part. Then you can deconstruct the step manually and run those pieces in Query Analyzer. (In theory you can debug your stored procedure in Visual Studio too.) From there it gets easier, small bits and pieces of your step may or may not be working, so start looking at your select statements in QA. Before you know it, you will be in DTS debugging heck instead of hell. [Stephen Forte's WebBlog]10:29:49 AM trackback [] Articulate [] |
Source: Marc's Voice I've been trying to get David Temkin to start blogging for a while now. Hopefully if he starts to see results from me, Scoble and Sarah blogging about Laszlo - that'll tip the scale towards him finding the time. I think he could easily become one of the leading A-list bloggers.... Anyway - it's great to see Scoble grokking Laszlo. Wait till you see what's coming..... Here's Robert's post..... On Saturday Maryam and I were honored to meet David Temkin, CTO of Laszlo Systems. It was an informal meeting, just something fun I try to do with people I respect. (Translation: I'll meet anyone interesting who invites me). A little story first. A month ago Maryam and I were getting our new house repainted. She was looking for color ideas and Tena Carter told her "check out Behr's new color picker." Let me tell ya, that little color picker made Maryam's heart warm and she was interested to know that David and team had done that for Behr. Now you know what to blame for the goofy pinkish color in our bathroom. Anyway, David painted a rather interesting vision of the future of the Web. Laszlo's system is an interesting one and joins Java, XML, and Flash together to deliver compelling, interactive Web services. Laszlo is something I'm keeping my eye on. Oh, yeah, and Laszlo is coming to the PDC as well. I really wanna hear what they think about all the new stuff in Longhorn. [The Scobleizer Weblog] [Marc's Voice]9:51:12 AM trackback [] Articulate [] |