SSIS tips & tricks
Peter Doyle
File Formats
• Identify the file formats correctly
• Notepad2.exe seems good for identifying
UTF-8 versus ANSI
• Beware processing an ANSI file as UTF-8
as you will lose characters like umlaut ü
and accented é
• XML default format is UTF-8
Embedded quotes
• SSIS doesn’t seem to handle comma
separated files with embedded quotes
• Access and Excel can?
• My solution is to pre-parse the file with a
regular expression and replace commas
with tabs
• Use regex buddy to help with regular
expressions (another dark science)
Manipulating variables
• Have demonstrated two approaches in
now famous Package3.dtsx (within a sql
task or script task)
• Use http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/sqltools/passing-variables-to-and-from-anssis-task/ as a reference
• Probably using script task is more intuitive
Looping
• Main thing to note is setting the
connectionstring of the connection so that
it becomes dynamic
•
FTP
• For looping through multiple FTP sites.
Have to code around this as passwords
cannot be set dynamically on FTP widget
• I used FtpClientConnection object (see
code)
• For recordset variables you need an object
of System.Object
• Demo configurations also
Zipping
• There is no widget so you will have to
concoct your own solution
• Batch files don’t work with unc’s
• Use execute process task and live with the
syntax which is frustrating