Find Next in MS Word

I discovered a way to search the last searched word in MS Word.  (It was pain…  F3 doesn’t works here)

You press CTRL-F for Find; after the first occurrence of the word found, you want to close the window and hit some short-cut to repeat the search, for this you have two ways

Shift + F4
Ctrl + Alt + Y

May be a very silly post… but was lacking this knowledge for so long.

SSIS Tips & Tricks

In this blog I listed the simple tips & tricks which can be used in SQL Server SSIS packages.

• On Error Event:
  On Error event is a cascading event.  So when an error occurs on a task the event is raised for all the level up from the task to package.  So you should not place Error Email Notification tasks in OnError task.  You can log or accumulate the error details to send it across.
• Constraints
  You can implement logical And, Or on task constraints.  You need to set the flat in constraint property.
  
• Store configuration in SQL Server
  You can store the Package configuration in SQL, while doing that it is recommended to store the connection string of the configuration database in Environmental Variable.  While configuring environment variable make sure you are using System Variable and not User Variable.
  
• Source with variables
  In my ETL I had a scenario in which I need to keep the variable as a source data.  Just as work around I have selected dummy data from database and using derived column to add variables as additional column.  It is simple tip to create variable values as a Source Component.
• Event instead of Exception
  In Script task don’t use throw new Exception.  Instead use Dts.Events.FireError method.

Art of Interview

In a recent discussion with one of senior architect, he shared few tips to smartly identifying candidates skills.

• Instead of asking question of Design Patterns discussions around principles of patterns will show the candidates understanding on design.  For example Interface uses inversions of principles.
• Instead of asking questions on particular architecture, discussion on the candidates experience with different architectural patterns.  Get his experience on his experience with architectural patterns. He can talk about moments he compromised or committed the rules of architecture, which will help to understand the candidates exposure.  For example if the architecture is MVVM implementing simple Popup will needs more code.
• Simple check on latest language feature which he get implemented in his current project will show his passion around technology and getting implementing in the projects.
• Asking simple list to tools the candidate uses frequently will help to judge the kind of day to day work he does
• Start the  discussion around generic title like Build automation and get thoughts on what are different level of build automation possible and challenges.  Which will help to judge the broad spectrum of thinking and influencing capabilities.  or topic like ORM will be good for this.

The discussion revealed me that an interview can be just a conversion and knowledge sharing kind of session.

Moving SSRS Report DB

Recently we upgraded our SSRS servers host OS from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 R2.  The reporting databases are in different server.  So we had the following plan.

1. Flatten SSRS Server
2. Install Windows Server 2008 R2
3. Install SSRS
4. Attach the existing Database.

The plan looks good, but the challenge was waiting for us after the update.  The step 4 was failing with an error “The report server cannot decrypt the symmetric key that is used to access sensitive or encrypted data in a report server database.”

After a bit of Bing! we realized the importance of symmetric key.  We need to have a backup of symmetric key when ever we perform any of the following operations.

• Changing the service account for the Report Server service.

• Migrating a Reporting Services installation to a different computer.

• Configuring a new report server instance to share or use an existing report server database.