Did a Time Trial today....came in last at 19 mph, which is my fastest ride all year, including the full-draft group rides...:-)

So a customer asked me yesterday:

"How can I search all my DTS packages in SQL 2000 for certain field/table names? Peoplesoft patches sometimes change these at the schema level."

Answer: You can't, using any native SQL Server utility. The best you can do is save the DTS packages as a Visual Basic File (.bas or .txt) and either aggregate them or index them via some other utility.

Alternative Answer: DTS Compare from www.red-gate.com might do it, but I have not tested it.

Happy searching!

Kevin3NF

Interesting issue I'm working on...

Company with SQL Servers all over the world applies MS06-014 and SQL Server 2000 SP4 close together.

Now none of their applications can make a TCP connection. Named Pipes is fine, but the application requires TCP.

Did all the normal stuff like checked the Server Network Utility (SNU), checked the firewalls to ensure the appropriate ports were open, explicity specified tcp in the servername (tcp:servername, port). No go.

Duh moment...check the SQL Server ERRORLOG. Nope...SQL Server was not listening on TCP, even though the SNU had it enabled. No errors in the log, or in the application log...just not listening on that protocol.

Resolution:
Check the value of the tcpport parameter in:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\MSSQLServer\SuperSocketNetLib\Tcp

In this instance, it was NULL. SNU was reporting 1433. Apparently SNU caches the port, or if the registry is NULL, it uses a default value to fill in the blank.

So we set the value manually, and all was good.

Lesson learned:
Check the ERRORLOG earlier in the process, and never trust a GUI.

Kevin3NF

I got a call today from a customer that wanted to upgrade SQL Server 6.0 to SQL 2000.

Problem...old tired server that may not survive a reboot, and no direct upgrade path.

Solution:
BCP the data out to text file, and find some 3rd party utility that can reverse engineer the schema.

We agreed to speak no more of this need. :-)

So...2.5 years after I started this, its time to add a second post :-)

This for now, is going to be a day-to-day account of various things I run across in my professional life as a SQL Server DBA, IT guy, Consulting firm owner, etc. I may toss in some cycling related items from time to time, just because I can.

I am currently working in my second contract for Microsoft SQL Server Support, on the Premier Integration team. My team handles issues such as Clustering, Replication, DTS, Security, Connectivity and BCP. Currently, I only deal with SQL Server 2000 and 7.0. No 2005 for the contractors.

Hope you like databases :)

Kevin3NF