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Its been a long-g-g-g-g time since I did a SSIS-related post so here’s a little ditty that I picked up while reviewing some internal stuff today. Editing SSIS configuration (i.e. .dtsConfig) files isn’t particularly easy. Most people I see who try to do this use a traditional text editor like Notepad but that isn’t a great experience because the ...

[Although I colloquially refer to myself on this blog as “SSIS Junkie” it won’t have escaped the notice of regular readers that I haven’t been talking about SSIS much lately, in fact nothing of real substance in regard to SSIS has appeared here since Nesting variables to calculate values on 24th October. The reason for that is that I simply ...

I was looking over a package today that a colleague had built and it contained the following code in a Script Task that was being used to return today’s day name: Public Sub Main() ' Dim sWeekday As String sWeekday = Now().DayOfWeek.ToString Dts.Variables(''User::DayName'').Value = sWeekday ...

Someone emailed me today asking: I have an SSIS package that outputs data that can’t be inserted into destination tables into flat log files [JT: I presume he means that error rows are redirected to a flat file] What is the easiest way to then after processing has completed: A) Check to see whether there has been any data that could not be ...

In the past I have advocated (and still do advocate) the use of a user variable in SSIS packages to store the path to a folder on the hard drive; I always use a variable called @[User::RootFolder] for this. Having this path available within a package variable enables you to dynamically set the location of files that your package may reference ...

Checkpoint usage in SSIS is a topic that is not well understood at all. The mechanism for defining checkpoint files and configuring containers to use them is ''fiddly'' at best and isn't helped by a bug in the Sequence Container (of which you can read more about here). I hope to find the time to write a definitive article in the near future that ...

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 ...

Checkpoint files are very useful mechanisms for recovering failed packages and I have talked about them quite a bit before, however, they do have one or two limitations. One thing that people typically want to do is always execute a particular task regardless of whether a checkpoint file exists or not. There may be a number of reasons for this - ...

Many ex-DTS users are miffed that the SSIS expression language does not have an equivalent of the VB Script IsNumeric() function that is used so extensively in DTS and to be honest, its a fair shout. The following code is very typical in DTS packages: If IsNumeric(RetailPrice) = False Then     DTSDestination(''RetailPrice'') ...

I haven't published a nugget for a while but today a guy called Antonio was asking me how one might output the captured rowcount in a file so i thought I'd put something together that demonstrated it. Its very simple, although you will need two data-flows. One to capture the rowcount (using a rowcount component), and another to ...