Daily Archives: April 27, 2004

oh the pain of changing production servers

Tools

About a month ago my client’s ISA server crashed. The I.T. guys discovered 30 GIGs of pictures and movies (mostly in german) on the box. Oops! So they had to rebuild that box and (I can’t even remember why) but also determined that they really needed to rebuild the server that is the webserver and sql server and I think also domain server. That box has all kind high tech RAID stuff on it and they want to continue using it.

Therefore we are temporarily moving over to a new box and I have to get everything set up for the move. But it’s not a copy and paste job. No sirree. The old box has Windows 2000 server and SQL server 7 and IIS5. Of course, we are taking advantage of this opportunity to get the client finally up to Windows 2003 and SQL 2000. Hooray.

Now I did this here in my little home office recently and knew enough to be dangerous, and enough to be afraid. Though I know all about the Network Service account on IIS6 now! 🙂 

But this has not gone easily or well. I have had all kinds of crazy permission problems which are not as easy to debug with things like web services on a production server. Then I got to my old rubber band and duct-tape application role in SQL Server. I have a major VB6 app in place there that uses ADO and a lot of SHAPED recordsets. I talked extensively with a lot of SQL folks before going with an Application Role to secure the database a few years ago (I was not terribly experienced with SQL Server admin). But I managed to get everything working and even worked around the problems with the odbc connection pool that are created with the application role.

However, on the new box, I was having huge headaches with my connections and finally decided it was time to kill the application role and just bite the bullet and create a sql server account that will only be accessed (one hopes) by that application. That turned out to be a really good idea. It took 1 minute to create the new login and 30 secnds to change the connection strings used for the app and then about 15 minutes to click all over the app to see that it worked. And now I don’t have to disable the connection pooling any more.

Here is what I think is the A#1 reason I have been through this hell.

No documentation on the database setup!

I have been creating this monster in bits and pieces over the last three years. Setting up the database stuff was just a way to get my apps working, so I was not as focused with it as I am with my applications. I often knew nothing about what I was doing and had to learn under fire (like most of us do…) A lot of it was experimentation. As I learned more, my solutions improved. However, there is a really nasty mix of the old and the new. Plus a lot of my experiments with permissions, logins, users, etc are still in there.

Attaching the database was not all that was necessary to do the move because of the fact that there are SO many asp.net apps and web services relying on the different databases and many many many stored procedures. And IIS6 has the Network Service account replacing my IWAM_server account. I had to recreate all of those permissions. (There is probably a nice little t-sql way to do that instead of manually). So the lack of documentation (or heck a better naming convention) of what sprocs belonged to what apps (of course there are a lot of shared objects) and which users needed what permissions for which objects..etc etc etc.

I have been taking very good notes through this whole process which I will organize after I get through this. But it has not been a lot of fun. I would MUCH rather be playing with VS2005, my tabletpc, my blogging application, my dog or possibly even doing the programming work that this same client is waiting for me to complete.

DevSource forums: What’s wrong with database access in .NET

Just Rambling

Things are already heating up over at the devsource.ziffdavis.com forum where anyone can ask me any question about my interview. The first question was an intense drill down about one of my favorite programming topics: database access in .NET. It would be interesting to hear what some others have to say on the topic. My lengthy response hasn’t shown up yet, but I suppose it will be there shortly.

A warning, it is a big of a PIA to register on that site in order to participate in the forums so be prepared.

TechEd BOFs – viewing and voting

Ineta

HEre’s the deal

When you first go to www.ineta.org/bof you will see a choice of TechEd 2004 or Tech-Ed EUrope 2004.

Select one of those BEFORE you click on the Proposed Topics, Submit a Topic or VOte on a Topic links.

Also,  you can vote from within the proposed topics or by selecting “Vote on a Topic” from the topline menu.

THere are 4 pages of topics right now. Be aware that there are two for Tablet PC, but one of them is cancelled (Brad Abrams). Instead, I am doing one, so if you want a Tablet BOF, that’s the one to vote for.

K.C. Lemson on Women in Tech -not just coders

Just Rambling

Inspired by Ted Neward’s posts, K.C. chimes in with her experiences in Tech and her ideas to add to the discussion. One of the points she makes is not to only talk about women programmers, but women in tech. Yes, the bigger picture is very important. When K.C. was trying to figure out what to do with her interests in tech, she kept getting pushed towards programming – as though that was the only thing in all of computer sciences as a career – or as if this is all there is in C.S. that’s appropriate for a woman (?).

In my conversations, I have  explicitly chosen to focus in on the programmers for a few reasons. First is that “women in I.T.” is an area that is well covered on a more general basis. There are many organizations that exist that address i.t. more generally., or even still with a broader sweep: “women in computer sciences”. This doesn’t mean that the book is closed on that, just that I don’t know what I can specifically add to that particular conversation that his new. Secondly, I am a programmer and that’s what I know, who I know, who my community is and where I think I can personally have an impact. So that’s what happens to work for me. But I don’t think I have total tunnel vision.

This is one of the reasons that the MVP summit was such a great eye opener. Developers only made up a portion of the group of MVP’s.

I definitely have an interest in enabling anyone of any gender into any field that they are interested in.

Anyway, I feel redundant here. I really have said a lot of this in the interview that is online at DevSource. There is even a forum there for talking about some of the things I said if anyone is interested. devsource.ziffdavis.com

Grigg on Bowie

Purely Personal

Elizabeth Grigg recently saw David Bowie in concert. Reading her post gave me excuse to think about my Bowie event in 1998. I drove 300 miles to see Bowie in a small club in Philly. Not a theater, but a big open bar with two levels and a capacity of, I think 2000. I stood up on the 2nd level and was right up against the balcony railing with Bowie not 200 feet from me. I think I spent the first 1/2 hour just saying "oh my god, oh my god!" (not that I think he is a god – well, almost) but I just could not believe that I was in the same room with him, that close after over 20 years of having him as my a#1 favorite rock star.

What was interesting was waiting in line to go in there were more people in their 30’s 40’s and 50’s then the usual concert goer and quite a number of them were bringing their kids with them to see and experience this legend.