When developing DTS packages, the DTS connection objects and
task objects are set with server names (could be DB, FTP, SMTP, etc),
credentials, source/target tables, and source/target file path and names in
their properties. This imposes the challenge of changing such hard coded
values at the time of deployment of the DTS packages in different environments
with environment-specific server names, credentials, etc. With deployment
being an activity of server management group, deployment of such DTS packages becomes
impossible without help from development group, though the, server management
group does not want to share sensitive information such as server credentials
to any other group. The second challenge of deployment is the manual
intervention required in deployment. Although Enterprise Manager provides an
uncomplicated user interface to deploy DTS, it is manual; so it is tedious and
error-prone. This article explains how such hard coded values can be
externalized so that changing such values becomes an easy job, and how the deployment
of DTS packages can be automated.