Hi

I can't believe I've never come across this before, I've deployed 100+
DTS packages into the kind of environment where I wouldn't be in work
right now if I'd got it wrong

The problem is with deploying a DTS package onto another server. So I
change the database and server properties of the Connections. The DTS
Designer (which I think is the villain in the piece - DTS itself runs
powerfully and well, the designer is unbelievably stupid about implied
changes) chucks up a message saying "you've invalided all these tasks,
please allow me to delete all your carefully developed
transformations". No of course I haven't invalidated them - this is
just another database with the same schema. I tick none of the tasks
and press OK.

Now my Data-driven Query tasks are trashed. Not at run-time, mind you
- the packages run fine. But as soon as a problem comes up (probably
my problem, rather than to do with the deployment) and I go into one of
the DDQ tasks to try to work out what's happening, the whole task is
trashed:

a) The Binding table is just, moronically, the first table in the
database.
b) All my transformations have been wiped out. (Of course I previously
saved them out as .bas files/manually produced Excel documentation of
Copy Column transformations).

I always thought DTS was reliable for deployment - but then I've never
used DDQs before. Can I rely on DTS as deploying reliably now?

Can I get round this by changing the Connection properties using
Disconnected Edit instead? If I do that, will the paranoid UI (which
lets down the great runtime engine) be left asleep, rather than waking
up and screaming that since I've changed the database I must have
invalidated all my tasks? Does the UI have a nasty long memory for
grudges like an elephant, so that just because I've changed a
Connection property from what the UI thinks it should be, someone could
go in to Task properties in a year's time - say to debug a problem -
and find that the task is effectively unviewable because the UI-nanny
has destroyed it?

any suggestions or help welcome.

cheers


Seb