luck of sorts

It was another lucky day today. I was fiddling about some DB2 drivers to transfer the data from the DB2 to MSSQL. Well, I didn't have to do it, but I just thought that I had been blessed by lots of luck these few days especially, so I need to return some favours.

I started with 1 driver that was using port 446 for the database connection and the error message said connection failed. Network-noob-me went to ask the network admin how to check whether the port is blocked. He took out a spreadsheet, checked a two records and said port is not blocked. I was impressed. Server-noob-me then went to the server admin to ask him how to check why I cannot telnet, he said telnet isn't installed by default from win server 2008 onwards. Network-noob-me went back to ask the network admin why after installing telnet, the connection still could't be established, he said because the other server isn't listening on that port. Ah ha, slapped myself for not knowing network fundamentals. Server-noob-me went back to the server admin to ask him how to check what ports are listener on the source server, and within a few clicks, there you go! A bunch of ports, except 446, so I looked through the list of ports used by the DB2 and picked port 50000.

Googling the port actually revealed that I was using the wrong driver. I was lucky to get the right port 50000. It's quite enlightening actually because DB-noob-me usually has an expert-DBA to help me with all the database connectivity and setup but there was no DB2 DBA this time round. A few more googles, I set up my drivers to connect to the DB2 DB but had problems mapping date fields. Googling didn't help that, so, call-a-friend.

The vendor PM, acclimatised with my incessant random questions and all, found a way out and the DB2 to MSSQL test concluded in just under an hour. Don't I just make things sound so simple? I think it's luck of sorts.

I will need to do my good deeds to return this luck; or maybe I had been doing lots of good deeds to receive this luck; or maybe ...