Its interesting to see what tools and environments give you the skills and knowledge to apply to different circumstances. Today I had someone ask me a question: how do I have a unique number against multiple databases in a system across multiple sessions in Kettle. The Kettle sequence generator by default isn’t able to be altered via params which means it starts from zero for each one, which isn’t what we really wanted. The solution was something simple: use postgres. PostgreSQL isn’t my most favourite database, its complete with lots of nice little traps for new users and I always forget the traps each time I set it up. I kid you not, it annoys me no end all of the little things I have to change to get PostgreSQL to work in the same fashion as MySQL. Its just that I don’t use it enough though its still more work. In any case, we created our sequence generator in PostgreSQL and connected it up to Kettle and the thing worked perfectly (once I got postgres listening on the right interface, gave the remote server access to connect and fixed up the permissions). Beyond that today was filled with not a lot else that was interesting, more PHP work, fun with ASP systems that nobody knows anything about and building my filesystem and crashing things.