This is just for fun :-)

Developers be proud of yourself...!!!

AbleBits - Excel add-ins, Outlook plugins, Outlook Express addons:

AbleBits is a great site offering useful and interesting plugins/add-ins for Microsoft Office products like Excel, Outlook etc. One of the coolest plugin I liked very much is Trim spaces for Excel which removes leading & trailing spaces in excel.

http://www.ablebits.com/

PDF - Create, View, Convert & More:
Free PDF add-on tool to stop crashes, view PDF as HTML, and convert Web pages to PDF and more.

http://www.pdfdownload.org/

Snagit Screen Capture:

Capture anything that you see on your screen, Edit your capture, Share it using Email, IM, PPT and more.

http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp

Jing - Capture & Share Instantly:

Capture anything you see on your computer screen and share it instantly as an image or a short movie.

http://www.jingproject.com/

Watch this space for more updates...

I have been working on SSIS for few years now and in couple of projects I have encountered a situation where in we need to load the data from Source to Staging area or from Feed Files to Staging area requiring similar structure for all the Staging ETL's except for the difference in Naming, Tables, Columns etc.

Interestingly SQL Server/SSIS provides a very great feature which can be utilized effectively to build large number of ETL's (similar ETL's) except for the differences in the tables, connections etc. This feature of SSIS is called as Package Template.

There is a detailed step by step procedure documented in the Microsoft Knowledge Base Articles. Following are the links to Microsoft Knowledge Base articles with detailed steps for creating Template Packages:

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345191.aspx
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/908018

Advantages of Template Packages in SSIS

• Considerable reduction in the development time
• Ensuring Coding/Naming Standards/Best Practices accross the Modules/Projects/Organization

Here are few tips to make effective use of Template Packages:

• Generation of UniqueID for evey single instance of Template Package
• Changing the necessary connections, configurations, protection levels etc
• Names in the template package should be generic. So that when we instantiate a package from template we can easily rename the new instance simply by doing a find and replace in the XML view of the dtsx packages. Example: Package Name as PKG_PRJ_TableName.dtsx, CheckPoint File Name CHK_PRJ_TableName.chk etc.

Hope you will find this post useful.

One fine day, a bus driver went to the bus garage, started his bus, and drove off along the route. No problems for the first few stops - a few people got on, a few got off, and things went generally well.

At the next stop, however, a big hulk of a Pathan got on. Six feet four, built like a wrestler, arms hanging down to the ground. He glared at the conductor and said, "Pathan doesn't pay!" and sat down at the back.

Conductor didn't argue with Pathan, but he wasn't happy about it. The next day the same thing happened and Pathan got on again, made a show of refusing to pay, and sat down. And the next day, and the next...

This grated on the bus driver, who started losing sleep over the way Pathan was taking advantage of poor conductor.

Finally he could stand it no longer. He signed up for body building courses, karate, judo, and all that good stuff.

By the end of the summer, he had become quite strong; what's more, he felt really good about himself. So, on the next Monday, when Pathan once again got on the bus and said, "Pathan doesn't pay!"

The driver stood up, glared back at Pathan, and screamed, "And why not?"

With a surprised look on his face, Pathan replied, "Pathan has a bus pass."

Management Lesson: Be sure there is a problem in the first place before working hard to solve one.







Source: Forwarded email.