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Echoing Variable Values

Bill Fellows shows how to send informational messages in SSIS and gives an example in Biml:

To aid in debugging, it’s helpful to have a “flight recorder” running to show you the state of variables. When I was first learning to program, the debugger I used was a lot of PRINT statements. Verify your inputs before you assume anything is a distillation of my experience debugging.

While some favor using MessageBox, I hate finding the popup window, closing it and then promptly forgetting what value was displayed. In SSIS, I favor raising events, FireInformation specifically, to emit the value of variables. This approach allows me to see the values in both the Progress/Execution Results tab as well as the Output window.

There’s value in putting in code like this as part of generic processing.  Flip the debug bit to true whenever you need this detailed information.  You can also think about calling the method multiple times, such as before and after an expected change block.