We built an igloo, and these happened.

by vaniecastro, posted in Others, Travels

IMG_7046

Once in a while, we take trips that become part of the story of our lives. It’s the trip we tell others over and over again during lunches, dinners, and coffee breaks. Punch lines and embarrassing moments from them doesn’t become less funny over time. We recall memories from pictures of these travels when we are sick or couldn’t sleep at night.

I have been blessed to have visited many beautiful places in 2016, but the trip I talked about the most is the one I made with three other friends for a weekend to hike up in the alps, build an igloo, sleep in it, and hike again the next day. From fear of memories fading away, and to revive the life out of my own small cabin on the internet, I’ve decided to write about one special weekend when we built an igloo and these happened..

Brother : “But you are going to an Igloo Fest, right? So there will be lots of people there?”

Me: “Errr… no not really. It will be just be four of us.”

We met at 7:00 in the morning in front of the office. Packed with 2 days worth of food, clothes, water, sleeping bag, mat, duct tape, and a myriad of other hiking equipments, Girl A, Boy 1, Boy 2 and I drove to Melchsee-Frutt – a small village near Kerns, Switzerland. We took a quick gondola up a certain altitude and from there snowshoed our way to where we built an igloo.

Part I – Snowshoes

The first time I saw snowshoes was the day before the Igloo trip while renting them from the shop near the office. They are a pair of over-sized plastic (normally) with some metal spikes one wears under one’s hiking boots to be able to walk on soft snow without basically sinking. They are really cool, although as of writing, I’ve never snowshoed without a backpack behind my back and fully within hiking trails, so I could so far only associate snowshoeing with exhaustion and sledging. Why sledging, you wonder. I will get there in a sec.

Anyway, speaking of trails, Boy 1 is not much a fan of them. So instead of taking a normal hiking trail to reach our location, we snowshoed our way up and down to what felt like an eternity until they realized I probably wasn’t going to make it. Up to this day, I still don’t understand how we managed to get to our chosen igloo location without looking at a map.

Rescue number one – my loud breathing gave me away. As a first time hiker, I underestimated how much I would have to carry on my back for 2 days / 1 night of staying outdoors, considering I brought only things for myself. The relatively adventurous snowshoeing took its toll on my small Asian body and finally I couldn’t hide the fact that I wasn’t fit enough to carry everything on my own and walk at the same time. My hiking mates, whom I’ve known only for 3 months or so, decided to take everything that is not cotton or fleece from my bag and split my luggage among the three of them. For someone who has been living alone since 17, this was really embarrassing. But it is still less embarrassing than giving up and going home so I sucked it up and continue.

Part II – Sledging

Somewhere along the snowshoeing up and down off-trail came a fence-like border of rocks which we had to step over and continue from the other side. The other side, however, was not exactly flat. And one needs to slide a little bit to the left while sitting down after the fence of rock in order to be able to walk on two feet again. In this very small “slide”, I manage to screw up and instead of sliding to the left where Boy 1 was waiting, I just slid straight, 50 – 100 meters down say a 30 – 45 degree slope. (These numbers might be exaggeration, forgive me). It’s tough to assess exactly how long it was for the only thing I could remember is that I tried not to scream and when my snowshoe has gathered enough snow to stop me from sledging “free” further, my heart was pounding and I couldn’t move or do anything. Not because I was hurt, but because the experience was completely new to my brain. 5 year olds would probably call it fun, but for me it was a life and death situation.

Rescue number two – thanks to my unreasonable fear (at that time) of the beautiful powdered snow around me, Boy 1 had to run towards me, take my backpack and walk me back to the path we chose to take that day.

Part III – Igloo Building

Shortly after lunch, we finally stopped at a location where we would build our “organic” accommodation for the night. We wasted no time and started our work immediately. I don’t recall any proper lunch break after the exhausting snowshoeing part of the day. Fortunately, as a woman, there’s not much really I could do building the igloo because 1) I do not have the power to saw blocks of ice from the ground 2) I do not have the strength to carry blocks of ice sewed from the ground 3) I do not have the engineering capacity to build an igloo from blocks of ice. What I could only do was assist Boy 1 / 2 in providing powdered snow as glue to connect the blocks of ice together or in polishing the igloo with powdered snow as soon as the blocks are in place. I also provided assistance in handing their water / food when necessary.

At the end of the day, we managed to build a sturdy igloo with a small cooking and dining area in front.

Part IV – Sleeping

We were very luck with the weather for the sun was always out and the sky was blue the whole day. As soon as the sun sets though, the temperature dropped too low to the point that it’s not safe to stand still anymore, rather better to move around in order to keep one’s blood circulation going. We cooked vermicelli noodles with chili con carne for dinner (not very good combination, never having it again), boiled water for some tea and decided to call it a day. Oh wait, we managed to do some star gazing but at some point got dizzy using an iPhone app to match which constellation we could see from our visible share of the night sky.

We retreated to our well made sleeping beds and tried to sleep. Yes  – it was cold. Very cold. Perhaps it was because on my left was Girl A, and on my right was big wall of ice. Above me was also a ceiling of ice. I tried the fetus position, wrapped myself with 3 layers of clothing (which I know now as also a big mistake), but still couldn’t sleep. It was cold, very cold, but I couldn’t complain because 1) It is not in my Asian nature to do so 2) No one forced me to be there. It was too cold, however, to believe that I could survive to see the sun the next day.

So I looked up at the ceiling and recall thinking “Boy 3 was right (He didn’t join after experiencing the 1st igloo fest) – I’m going to die tonight.” I wanted to say goodbye to my new friends so I turned to my left to see if anyone else was awake. Indeed. Boy 1 was already looking at my direction, waiting for me to send the signal of defeat for God knows how long already, and asked me the question “Are you cold?”.

Rescue number three – (continuing the draft after a year or so). Apparently, I should have changed my clothes before getting inside the sleeping bag in order not to sleep with all the sweat, which will be cold water if not ice, I accumulated during the day. I was too shy to do this given there was no proper toilet around. So instead of asking to have the igloo to myself for 5 minutes to change, I simply ditched the suggestion. I then had to change in the middle of the night with everyone in the igloo. My igloo mates provided me with extra socks, hand warmers which I had to use as feet warmer and fed me tea. We switched positions so I get to be in the middle of two warm persons. With all these help, I finally managed to sleep. Until..

After two hours, I woke up again. This time, the father instincts of Boy 1 and 2 kicked in immediately and asked me if I was still cold. “No.. I’m hungry”. I ate my trail mix as quietly as I could, had some tea, and all of us managed to fall back to sleep fast enough until..

At 4:30 A.M., in the middle of the Swiss alps, inside an igloo built with our bare hands, with no heating except for a candle, no electricity, and no WIFI, my alarm from the day before set off waking everyone – again.

The funny thing is, despite all the hassles I’ve caused to these three people during the trip, they ended up to be the best buddies I would have in this foreign land I called home for the past 2 years. We went on to have more winter, summer, and autumn hikes together. As a matter of fact next week, fingers-crossed, we will attempt to have Igloo Fest 2018 🙂

 

Vanie Castro Takes Pictures

by vaniecastro, posted in Others, Photograhpy
img_8194
Lamp Posts – Colmar, Alsace, France

In case you haven’t received a mail, or have not been forced to look at it on my phone or in a computer, then you probably don’t know about..

http://vaniecastrophotography.com

It’s a new domain dedicated purely for photographs I took and soon will take. Thanks to 500px, it doesn’t take too much resources now to set up a fancy web site like this. I couldn’t be happier that finally, my photographs have found a new home where they can be shared to everyone instead of living in the dark shadows of my hard and online drives.

Photography and I go a long way back. As a child, I recall looking through the pages of interior design catalogs or hanging out at bookstores browsing through books I could not afford. But it wasn’t until university years when I learned about this wonderful world called the internet that I realized how much time I could spend looking at and searching photographs. Back then, or even now for some, flickr was the site to join if you are a photography enthusiast. I spent quite some time on flickr explore, seeing the rest of the world through the eyes of other photographers. Someday, I used to say, I will also travel, take pictures, and bring a smile to someone’s gloomy day 🙂

I still have 2 accounts on flickr, one I couldn’t recover because Yahoo decided to disable my account which I haven’t used in years in favor of gmail. Fortunately, even as a teenager, I knew better than to post unnecessary images online.

I worked as a Software Engineer for Canon after getting my bachelor’s degree. Due to non-disclosure agreements, I can’t really share what I worked on, but I can tell you that they involved looking at high quality photographs. 🙂 I still have professional images of Moscow and well prepared still life table arrangements in my head which we used as test data. Working in Canon also means every other person is a photography enthusiast. People who goes to business trips and long term assignments would post beautiful pictures from Japan on social media which I envied looking at every time. As of writing, I still haven’t been to Japan, but it is at the top of my travel list. Finally, we used to get discounts on Canon products as employees, which is most likely why all my 3 cameras are Canon. I don’t think I will ever switch brands. 🙂

I was 22 years old when I got my first camera. It was from the Canon PowerShot line, but I couldn’t recall the exact model. It was pink and silver, and I paid CHF 140 for it. It died a natural death after a few years, and just before I left Canon, I managed to ask someone  to buy another candy bar point-and-shoot from Japan for me. This time, it was a purple Canon Ixus. I still have it and even brought it with me to Switzerland. I don’t use it anymore, but I think it still works perfectly fine.

Around 2012 when I bought my first DSLR. It was a Canon EOS 650D. I bought it in Singapore, but since I would prefer that it documents my family’s life (whom at this point I am 3.5 hours flight away), I left it in the Philippines after my first visit. I couldn’t afford to buy another one for myself so I kept photography at the back of my head. A year later, I couldn’t help it anymore and I bought myself a Canon EOS 700D, which I still happily use as of today. Despite my love for photography, I never sat down to understand the jargons of lenses, so I stayed with the kit lens until December 2016.

I have been very lucky to have found new friends who could figure out easily what brings me joy, or perhaps because I tell them anyway. They gave me a Canon EF-S – 24 mm – f/2.8 STM lens last Christmas! It is a prime lens that is sooo light, I wouldn’t hesitate to bring my SLR to hiking trips anymore. 🙂 It was after I received this gift that I realized again how much I enjoy taking pictures. I had the impression that Flickr doesn’t inspire me as much anymore, so I moved to 500px. And it is from there that I am able (with a fee and some fiddling) to create http://vaniecastrophotography.com.

Have a nice week ahead!

How to Implement Slowly Changing Dimension Type 2 in SQL Server Analysis Services

by vaniecastro, posted in SQL Server, SSAS

The other day somebody asked me how I could implement Slowly Changing Dimension Type 2 (SCD Type 2) in SSAS. I wasn’t able to give the answer right there and then, so I decided to create a demo video to answer his question and as a note to myself for future uses.

This is my first ever demo video by the way and I agree that it could have been better in many parts. I do hope that despite my amateur recording and editing skills, I am still able to send the message across. 🙂

2015 Book 6: Being Mortal by Atul Gwande

by vaniecastro, posted in Book Review

wpid-20150719_155320.jpg

Where I come from it is taboo to talk about death. Even your closest family and friends wouldn’t want to know how you prefer to die. In fact death is such an unacceptable fact of life that the mere act of talking about it is considered as “bad luck”.

In Being Mortal, Atul Gwande walks us through the reality of mortality – through old age and through terminal illness. As an American of Indian descent, he talks about how America as a society takes care of its aged population. As a surgeon, he shares how patients with terminal illness and their families dealt with their situations.

The book touches on a topic not many others dare to discuss; it raises questions others are unable to ask before. What is a decent way to leave this place, for instance? What is a decent way to live in it? How far would you go to prolong a loved one’s life? Would you rather live a life in constant pain or to let go of both?

As much as Being Mortal is thought-provoking, it is also well written and organized. Perhaps  because the author is a man of science that he is careful to distinguish facts from opinion. Unless you are a God or a Demi-God who lives on ambrosia, then this book is worth reading.

Would I recommend this book to a friend? Yes.

Automate SSIS 2012 Project Deployment and Configuration Management using PowerShell – Part 3

by vaniecastro, posted in Automation, Continuous Integration, SQL Server, SSIS, Technology

Continuing: Automate SSIS 2012 Project Deployment and Configuration Management using PowerShell – Part 2

Download SSISProject containing:

  1. DeploymentDemo SSIS Project
  2. SimpleSSISDeploy.ps1

Step 3: Execute SimpleSSISDeploy.ps1

Last and definitely NOT the least, where all the magic happens – SimpleSSISDeploy.ps1.
I put comments where needed, and you can download a zip of all the components, as well as a sample SSIS project at the bottom of this post. 🙂

param ([string]$ConfigurationsPath,
       [string]$IspacPath, 
       [string]$ParametersXml, 
       [string]$Environment)
       
# Store the IntegrationServices Assembly namespace to avoid typing it every time
$ISNamespace = "Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.IntegrationServices"

# Load the IntegrationServices Assembly
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.IntegrationServices") | Out-Null;

       
function Main()
{

    # Input validation
    if (-Not(Test-Path($ParametersXml)))
    {
        throw New-Object System.ArgumentException "Parameters.xml not found"
        return
    }
    
    #Get configurations from *.dtproj.user
    [xml]$configFile =  Get-Content $ConfigurationsPath
    $configurationsNode = $configFile.SelectNodes("/DataTransformationsUserConfiguration/Configurations/Configuration")
    
    # Get configuration for $Environment parameter
    $configurationsNode | % {
        if ($_.Name -eq $Environment)
        {
            $serverName = $_.Options.ServerName
            $pathOnServer = $_.Options.PathOnServer
        }
    }   
    
    if ([string]::IsNullOrEmpty($serverName) -or [string]::IsNullOrEmpty($pathOnServer) -or 
        $serverName -eq $null -or $pathOnServer -eq $null )
    {
        throw New-Object System.ArgumentException "Could not connect to Server: $serverName. Does it really exist?"
        return
    }   
    
    # Get catalog, folder and project name from $pathOnServer
    $catalogConnectionString = "Data Source=" + $serverName + ";Initial Catalog=master;Integrated Security=SSPI;"
    $path = $pathOnServer.Split("/", 4)
    $catalogName = $path[1]
    $folderName = $path[2]
    $projectName = $path[3]
    
    if ([string]::IsNullOrEmpty($catalogName) -or 
        [string]::IsNullOrEmpty($folderName) -or 
        [string]::IsNullOrEmpty($projectName))
    {
        throw New-Object System.ArgumentException "Check that $Environment build configuration is set correctly in the SSIS project."
        return
    }
    
    # Connect to the SSIS Server
    $sqlConnection = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection $catalogConnectionString
    $integrationServices = New-Object $ISNamespace".IntegrationServices" $sqlConnection
    
    if ($integrationServices -eq $null)
    {
        Write-Host "Unable to connect to Integration Services Catalog."
        return
    }
    
    # Get the existing catalog if it exists
    if ($integrationServices.Catalogs.Contains($catalogName)) 
    {
        Write-Host "$catalogName catalog found"
        $catalog = $integrationServices.Catalogs[$catalogName]        
    }
    else
    {
        Write-Host "Could not find "$catalogName" Catalog. Are you sure you have the correct name?"
        return
    }
    
    # Get catalog folder
    if ($catalog.Folders.Contains($folderName))
    {
        Write-Host "$folderName catalog folder found"
        $folder = $catalog.Folders[$folderName]
    }
    else
    {
        Write-Host "Could not find $folderName catalog folder. You are almost there."
        return
    }
    
    # Read the project file, and deploy it to the folder
    [byte[]] $projectFile = [System.IO.File]::ReadAllBytes($IspacPath)
    $project = $folder.DeployProject($projectName, $projectFile)
    
    # Get project
    if ($folder.Projects.Contains($projectName)) 
    {
        Write-Host "$projectName project found"
        $project = $folder.Projects[$projectName]
        
    } else {
        Write-Host "$projectName project not found. Sorry :("
        return 
    }
    
    # Get function parameters from file
    Write-Host "Reading from Parameters.xml"    
    [xml]$file = Get-Content $ParametersXml
    
    Update-Parameters $project $file 
} 

function Update-Parameters($project, $file)
{
    # Update Project Parameters
    $projectParameters = $file.SelectNodes("/SSIS/" + $Environment + "/ProjectParameters/Parameter")

    $projectParameters | % {
        
        $parameter = $_.Name
        if ($parameter -eq $null)
        {
            continue
        }
        
        if ($project.Parameters.Contains($parameter))
        {
            Write-Host "$parameter project parameter found"
            $project.Parameters[$_.Name].Set([Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.IntegrationServices.ParameterInfo+ParameterValueType]::Literal,$_.InnerText)
            Write-Host "$parameter project parameter value updated"
        }
        else
        {
             Write-Host "$parameter project parameter NOT FOUND"
        }
    }
    
    Write-Host "Updating parameters of" $project.Name "project successful"

    # Update Package Parameters
    $packages = $file.SelectNodes("/SSIS/" + $Environment + "/Packages/Package")

    $packages | % {
        
        $packageName = $_.Name
        $parameters = $_.Parameters.ChildNodes
        
        if ($project.Packages.Contains($packageName))
        {
                Write-Host "$packageName package found"
                $ssisPackage = $project.Packages[$packageName]
                
                foreach ($param in $parameters){
                
                    $paramName = $param.Name
                    $paramValue = $param.InnerText
                    
                    if ($ssisPackage.Parameters.Contains($paramName))
                    {
                        Write-Host "$paramName package parameter found"
                        $ssisPackage.Parameters[$paramName].Set([Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.IntegrationServices.ParameterInfo+ParameterValueType]::Literal,$paramValue)
                        Write-Host "$paramName package parameter value updated"
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        Write-Host "$paramName package parameter NOT FOUND"
                    }
                } 
                Write-Host "Updating parameters of $packageName package successful"
                $ssisPackage.Alter() 
                         
        }
        else
        {
            Write-Host "$packageName package NOT FOUND"
        }
        
    }

    $project.Alter()
}

Main

Sample execution code:


.\SimpleSSISDeploy.ps1 -ConfigurationsPath "F:\PROJECTS\SSISProject\DeploymentDemo\DeploymentDemo\DeploymentDemo.dtproj.user" -IspacPath "F:\PROJECTS\SSISProject\DeploymentDemo\DeploymentDemo\bin\Development\DeploymentDemo.ispac" -ParametersXml "F:\PROJECTS\SSISProject\DeploymentDemo\DeploymentDemo\Parameters.xml" -Environment "Development"

And that concludes my solution to an automated SSIS Deployment and configuration management. Feel free to comment if anything is not clear. 🙂

Automate SSIS 2012 Project Deployment and Configuration Management using PowerShell – Part 2

by vaniecastro, posted in Continuous Integration, Deployment, SQL Server, SSIS, Technology

Continuing Automate SSIS 2012 Project Deployment and Configuration Management using PowerShell – Part 1

Download SSISProject containing:

  1. DeploymentDemo SSIS Project
  2. SimpleSSISDeploy.ps1

Step 2: Add Parameters.xml to the SSIS Project

Before SQL Server 2012, configuration data for SSIS package such as server names, database names, and SMTP servers can be stored in XML files, environment variables, or a separate configuration database. With the new Parameters feature of SSIS catalog, managing configuration data across your environments has never been so intuitive. Instead of  updating a database or a cryptic XML file, someone could simply login to the SSIS catalog via SSMS and configure parameter values manually. Although configuring an SSIS project directly in Production may seem convenient and give anyone a demi-God feeling, it is, however, very risky and is prone to human error.

To continuously integrate our SSIS project, we can automate the task of updating parameter values after the *.ispac is successfully deployed. To do that, we will use an input file, Parameters.xml, to tell our PowerShell script what value to set each parameters with depending on which environment it is deploying to. We will add this file within the SSIS Project itself, so that

  1. It is under source control
  2. Developers will be reminded to prepare it before deployment and
  3. We have all the information we need to execute our SSIS project in one location

Enough of the intro, here’s exactly what you need to do:

  1. Create a Parameters.xml file under the SSIS Project root folder (same folder as *.dtproj file). Paste the code below: 
    
<SSIS>
    <Development>
        <ProjectParameters>
            <Parameter Name="InitialCatalog">AdventureWorksDWH2012</Parameter>
            <Parameter Name="ServerName">SQLSSISDEV</Parameter>
        </ProjectParameters>
        <Packages>
            <Package Name="MainPackage.dtsx">
                <Parameters>
                    <Parameter Name="SourceFolderRelativePath">\\Source\Folder\RelativePath</Parameter>
                    <Parameter Name="LogFileName">MainPackage.log</Parameter>
                </Parameters>
            </Package>
        </Packages>
    </Development>
    <Acceptance>
      <ProjectParameters>
        <Parameter Name="InitialCatalog">AdventureWorksDWH2012</Parameter>
        <Parameter Name="ServerName">SQLSSISACC</Parameter>
      </ProjectParameters>
      <Packages>
        <Package Name="MainPackage.dtsx">
          <Parameters>
            <Parameter Name="SourceFolderRelativePath">\\Source\Folder\RelativePath</Parameter>
            <Parameter Name="LogFileName">MainPackage.log</Parameter>
          </Parameters>
        </Package>
      </Packages>
    </Acceptance>
    <Production>
      <ProjectParameters>
        <Parameter Name="InitialCatalog">AdventureWorksDWH2012</Parameter>
        <Parameter Name="ServerName">SQLSSISPRD</Parameter>
      </ProjectParameters>
      <Packages>
        <Package Name="MainPackage.dtsx">
          <Parameters>
            <Parameter Name="SourceFolderRelativePath">\\Source\Folder\RelativePath</Parameter>
            <Parameter Name="LogFileName">MainPackage.log</Parameter>
          </Parameters>
        </Package>
      </Packages>
    </Production>
</SSIS>
  2. Add Parameters.xml file as an existing item to the SSIS Project. It will automatically be placed under Miscellaneous folder.

    Parameters

Next: Automate SSIS 2012 Project Deployment and Configuration Management using PowerShell – Part 3

Automate SSIS 2012 Project Deployment and Configuration Management using PowerShell – Part 1

by vaniecastro, posted in Automation, Continuous Integration, Deployment, SQL Server, SSIS, Technology

Let’s start this by describing the scenario with which the approach described below will be useful to you:

  1. You are using SQL Server 2012/2014
  2. You have a separate server/instance for each staging environment (Development, Acceptance, Production, etc.)
  3. You would like to automate SSIS project deployments to your target environments
  4. You would like to automate managing SSIS package configurations (e.g. server names, database names, etc.) on all environments without using a separate configuration database

If you nod your way through the 4 points above, then take the time to read my solution below. It’s long, but I promise you will find some points mentioned helpful if not the entire thing.

Pre-requisites

I assume that you are familiar with the new Project Deployment Model feature of SSIS 2012/2014. You should also understand how Parameters are utilized with an SSIS Project. You should not be afraid of PowerShell and XML, for neither of them bite and both are very easy to learn. Note that I am not going to use the new Environment Variables feature because it assumes that all environments are deployed to a single server  – which is not the usual case for enterprises or any medium to large scale company for that matter.

The Solution in Summary

My solution has 3 components:

  1. PowerShell script that deploys an *.ispac file to an SSIS Catalog and updates Project and Package Parameters
  2. SSIS Project build configuration to store the SSIS Catalog information
  3. Additional XML file within the SSIS project to store parameter values

Download SSISProject containing:

  1. DeploymentDemo SSIS Project
  2. SimpleSSISDeploy.ps1

Step 1: Setup the SSIS Project’s Build Configuration

We will store the target SSIS Catalog information in the SSIS Project itself so that our script can find on its own where to deploy the *.ispac file. To do that, open the SSIS project then..

  1. In Solution Explorer, right-click on the Visual Studio solution and click Properties.
  2. Solution Property Page dialog opens.
  3. Under Configuration Properties, select Configuration.
  4. Click Configuration Manager at the upper right corner of the window. Configuration Manager dialog opens.
  5. Click the dropdown list under Active solution configuration.
  6. Select New. New Solution Configuration dialog opens.
  7. In the Name field, enter one of your environments. Check “Create new project configurations”. Click OK.
  8. Repeat steps 4 – 6 until you have created solutions and project configurations for all  your environments.
  9. Click Close. Click OK.

Now, we are ready to fill our build configuration for each environment.

  1. In Solution Explorer, right-click on the SSIS project and click Properties. 
  2. Propert Page dialog opens.
  3. Under Configuration Properties, click Deployment. Configuration dropdown is now enabled.
  4. Select one environment created earlier.
  5. In the main pane under Deployment Model (Project), fill the Server Name and Server Project Path details. Click Apply.
  6. Repeat steps 4 – 5 for all environments. Click OK to close the Property Pages window.

Finally, open the folder containing the SSIS project and locate .dtproj.user file. If you can’t see it, modify Folder Options to see the hidden files. The file should look like this:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<DataTransformationsUserConfiguration xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
 <Configurations>
   <Configuration>
     <Name>Development</Name>
<options>
       <ServerName>SQLSSISDEV</ServerName>
       <PathOnServer>/SSISDB/LAB/DeploymentDemo</PathOnServer>
       <UserIDs />
       <UserPasswords />
       <OfflineMode>false</OfflineMode>
       <ProgressReporting>true</ProgressReporting>
       <ParameterConfigurationSensitiveValues />
     </Options>
   </Configuration>
   <Configuration>
     <Name>Acceptance</Name>
<options>
        <ServerName>SQLSSISACC</ServerName>
        <PathOnServer>/SSISDB/LAB/DeploymentDemo</PathOnServer>
        <UserIDs />
        <UserPasswords />
        <OfflineMode>false</OfflineMode>
        <ProgressReporting>true</ProgressReporting>
        <ParameterConfigurationSensitiveValues />
      </Options>
  </Configuration>
  <Configuration>
     <Name>Production</Name>
<options>
        <ServerName>SQLSSISPRD</ServerName>
        <PathOnServer>/SSISDB/LAB/DeploymentDemo</PathOnServer>
        <UserIDs />
        <UserPasswords />
        <OfflineMode>false</OfflineMode>
        <ProgressReporting>true</ProgressReporting>
        <ParameterConfigurationSensitiveValues />
      </Options>
  </Configuration>
 </Configurations>
</DataTransformationsUserConfiguration>

Next: Automate SSIS 2012 Project Deployment and Configuration Management using PowerShell – Part 2

2015 Book 5: How Google Works

by vaniecastro, posted in Book Review

IMG_5022

by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg with Alan Eagle

For starters, How Google Works is a management book. In fact, I stumbled upon it in the business section of the bookstore. It was written by two leaders reflecting on how their company hires, value its employees, come up with important decisions, builds its portfolio, and define the company culture among others.

You would want to read this book if you are a manager or desire to be one someday. If you are one of the brave and fortunate enough to set up her own business (within the IT industry or not), you will sure to find gems of advise and inspiration among the pages of this book. If you have reached a decision-making position, then this book can give you insights on what may or many not work for a company in the Internet Century. Finally, if you are simply one who enjoys thought-provoking materials then having a peek inside one of the world’s best companies is time well spent.

How Google Works is close to my heart not only because I believe that Google is great a company in many ways I can argue but also that my profession belongs to the same industry. I will then take this review as an opportunity to add anecdotes and dimensions to some points raised in the book based on my own experiences working in Corporate IT. I’m writing from a perspective of someone who has only played technical roles and has worked in several multi-national companies in Singapore and the Philippines, so consider that as my vantage point.

Finally, I tried not to in my previous reviews, but I will drop some quotes from this book for a change. I will indent and italicized them so spoiler-haters like me can opt and easily identify which lines to skip. What I am really trying to say for the past n paragraphs is that this post will be relatively long so go get your popcorn or drop out now, otherwise, let’s get started. 🙂

On Smart Creatives

The book had me at “smart creative”, a term they use to call the kind of people who work for them and the kind they search to join their company. Modesty aside, the section describing a smart creative feels like a song dedicated to professionals like me. I could put a melody on it and sing it to myself over and over again. I could print it out, put in a frame, and hang it on my wall. The point is not to say that Google should hire me (I was given that chance, and obviously I didn’t make it), but that a female with communication skills can also be the same person a team depends on for technical expertise. The section was also a reminder that staying late in office doesn’t always mean inefficiency, but can also show how much time a person is willing to dedicate to her craft. Here are my favorite quotes from that section:

“She is driven to be great, and that doesn’t happen 9-to-5”

“..because no matter how hard you try, you can’t tell people like that how to think. If you can’t tell someone how to think then you have to learn to manage the environment  where they think. And make it a place where they want to come every day.”

On Culture

Google promotes a culture of Fun and Yes. A culture where teams are organized around people who matters and contribute the most. The chapter on culture also introduced me to the word knave – which by definition means “a dishonest or unscrupulous man”. Knaves are people who make their co-workers lives’ miserable and great contributors to why smart creatives leave a company. Knaves are people who we usually call with the A* and the B* words. The problem with the A* and B* words is that I can’t use them with my family, and to simply call a knave “a man or a woman in office” does not seem to justify the amount of evil this person do.

On Gangs of Knaves

Divas, the lesser evil cousin of knaves are also mentioned in the book, but instead of talking about them, I would like to add a third social persona – Gangs. A gang is a group of knaves, soon-to-be knaves and knaves wannabes within a team. Gang members support each other and only each other and put its members growth first before the rest of the team. Gangs are more toxic than individual knaves because their collective evil is stronger than the individual good of other team members. It is also worth noting that gangs only exist when there is NO meritocracy in the company. This absence is the air gangs breathe. The unfortunate truth is that they exist and even evolve. If you are not in the position to dissolve these gangs, the best thing you can do is stay as far away from them as possible. On the brighter side, I have met leaders who are smart enough to identify and break up gangs; those are the leaders you want to associate yourself with.

On Talent – Hiring and Keeping Them

Google illustrates in the book how much effort it gives in hiring the best people it can find and how it tries as a company to make them stay. The reality is: identifying good employees through a series of interviews and exams requires an investment of time and creativity not all company is willing to give. And getting good people in is just a beginning. A company needs to define career paths, evaluation criteria, training plans and other devices to manage its worker pool. These responsibilities do not directly generate money and obviously incur costs. A trending workaround to this dilemma is outsourcing. Outsourcing works by getting people work for a company via a third-party without the associated Human Resources cost. There are pros and cons of outsourcing that is out of the scope of this article, but I would like to point out a disadvantage related to talent.

Because of the lack or worse absence of proper evaluation on external personnel, the company may overlook smart creatives already working under them. This is more problematic when the company has gone beyond outsourcing operational personnel into outsourcing investment activities that is supposed to serve as the company’s competitive advantage. A smart creative in her right senses will not settle in an environment where all her efforts go into a black hole. And when she leaves she takes her expertise, efficiency, ideas, and mentoring experiences with her. She will leave footprints too big for those she left behind to fill.

Let me end this topic by a quote below from the book:

“While A’s tend to hire A’s, B’s hire not just B’s, but C’s and D’s too. So if you compromise standards or make a mistake and hire a B, pretty soon you’ll have B’s, C’s, and even D’s in your company.” 

What else is there?

The 2nd half of the book focused on decision-making, communication and innovation aspects of a business. Instead of expanding on these topics, I would like to encourage the leader readers of this review and hopefully of the book to take a step back and re-assess his or her own company’s leadership style.

It is easier to be on defensive side and say that Google can afford to work the way described in the book because it is Google. Perhaps it would be more helpful to think that Google is Google because of the way it works.

Will I recommend this book to a friend? I think you already know the answer. 🙂