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I have recently been working on a project implementation that incorporated SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) and there was a requirement to be able to create partitions on-the-fly from our ETL process running on SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). I looked into using XML for Analysis (XMLA) to do this but after some trial and error decided ...

Its possible that at some point when building SSIS packages that you will want to initialise a variable with some value at execution time and the most obvious way of doing this is to use a script task. That code would look something like the following: Public Sub Main() Dim vars As Variables ...

A couple of work colleagues had a problem when using SSIS yesterday which took a bit of working out so I thought I'd share it here, it'll be useful for anyone else that has the same problem. It was all to do with calling .Net assemblies (i.e. DLLs) from the SSIS Script Task. The assembly in question was basically a proxy to a web service however ...

Here's a handy little tip for when you are building custom destination components or script destination components that enables you to log the number of processed rows. Have you ever seen that handy little message that appears in your logs that tells you how many rows arrived at a destination component? It looks a little like ...

''Why the <insert your favourite expletive here> doesn't SSIS support C# for the script task and script component?''   I've heard the above complaint, in various different ways, many many times over the past 18 months since SQL Server 2005 was released. Its a valid complaint to which there is a valid answer (which I'm not going ...

Here's a useful page to keep an eye on: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms403408.aspx. It lists the current features within SSIS that will be disappearing in future versions and the strongest message I take from it is that you should upgrade your existing DTS packages from SSIS sooner rather than later. Currently it also makes ...

Have you ever had the requirement to output data from a data-flow as a CSV file or an XML file where the choice is dependant on the file extension of your destination file? Well, David Bulog (also known by the pseudonymn ''Mr Pro Tools'') has and he has posted his code to do this here. I think David went through a bit of trauma to get this ...

I've noticed that alot of people have a need to send SMTP email from a script task rather than the SendMail Task. A couple of the reasons for this are: HTML emails None-Windows authenticated SMTP servers neither of which are supported by the SMTP Mail Task. Well, its possible to use the script task as a route into using . Here's ...

UPDATE: Only 2 hours after posting this and Josh has already told me about another one - a Compress File Task. He's a one-man SSIS custom task machine :)   Josh Twist it seems has been bitten by the SSIS bug and is beginning to churn out some really useful SSIS add-ins. Witness his Custom Logging Task that I ...

I thought it would be worth publishing a list of guidelines that I see as SSIS development best practices. These are my own opinions and are based upon my experience of using SSIS over the past 18 months. I am not saying you should take them as gospel but these are generally tried and tested methods and if nothing else should serve as a basis ...