SSIS

Handling Mixed Format Data Files in SSIS

Some time back I wrote about how to use the script component to parse out ragged data files in SSIS. In this post, I’ll continue the discussion to describe how to handle mixed format data files – specifically, those with several different record types in each file. In a perfect world, a flat file will contain a single record type….


A full day with me, SSIS, and Edgar Allan Poe

When I think about Baltimore, I think about Edgar Allan Poe. Baltimore was Poe’s one-time home, and in fact there is a museum located in a home in which he once lived. I’ve been a Poe fan since high school, and am looking forward to seeing some of the Poe-related sights when I’m in town next month. Why am I…


Best of PASS Summit 2014: Building Bullet-Resistant SSIS Packages

This week, PASS announced the Best of PASS Summit 2014, a collection of the 10 highest-rated sessions from last fall’s PASS Summit in Seattle. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my session, “Building Bullet-Resistant SSIS Packages”, was among these. All of these sessions (including lots of other content) are available for viewing on the PASS TV channel on YouTube….


Fix Inconsistent Line Terminators in SSIS

When processing data files using SQL Server Integration Services, it is not uncommon to find files with different end-of-line markers for each line in the file. In this post, I will demonstrate how to fix inconsistent line terminators in SSIS to avoid ETL errors. Fix Inconsistent Line Terminators in SSIS In every text file, there are unprintable characters called line…


Iterating Through Excel Worksheets with Biml

Wrangling large or complex Excel workbooks in SSIS can be a challenge. From managing data types (more about that in this post by Koen Verbeeck) to addressing multiple worksheets in a single document, configuring SSIS to properly read from or write to Excel documents is tedious at best. While there are no silver bullets to completely solve these problems, I’ve…


SSIS Parent-Child Architecture in Catalog Deployment Mode

This is the third in a series of posts about SSIS parent-child architecture.  You can find the index page here. In my previous posts on SSIS parent-child package architecture, I described the benefits of the parent-child package design pattern and demonstrated the implementation of such a pattern in package deployment mode.  In this post, I will demonstrate the parent-child pattern…


Mile High Tech Con

There’s a brand new business intelligence conference launching next month in Denver, Colorado.  The Mile High Tech Con is a three-day event taking place July 24-26, 2014, and is aimed at business intelligence practitioners, data analysts, and information managers/CIOs. From the event website: Featuring three days of sessions and events focusing on Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence. Mile High Tech…


Speaking at the SQL PASS 2014 Summit

I’m happy to announce that I will be speaking at the SQL PASS Summit this fall.  The summit will be held during the first week of November in Seattle, Washington.  This will be my seventh year attending the PASS Summit, and my fourth year as a speaker. This year I will be delivering a new presentation entitled “Building Bullet-Resistant SSIS…


Parent-Child SSIS Architecture

This is the first in a series of technical posts on using parent-child SSIS architecture.  In this post, I will provide an overview of the architecture and describe the benefits of implementing a parent-child design pattern in SQL Server Integration Services structures. Parent-Child SSIS Architecture The simplest definition of SSIS parent-child architecture is that it consists of packages executing other…


New Blog Series: Parent-Child Architecture in SSIS

I’m kicking off a new series of blog posts discussing the topic of parent-child architectures in SQL Server Integration Services.  The links to the posts in this series are below. Parent-Child SSIS Architecture SSIS Parent-Child Architecture in Package Deployment Mode SSIS Parent-Child Architecture in Catalog Deployment Mode I still remember the first SSIS package I ever deployed to a production environment. …