Category: Biml

Meagan Longoria discusses control nuggets in BimlScript:

Control nuggets start with <# and end with #>. Just like text nuggets, control nuggets can be a single line or multiple lines. And they can contain simple or complex logic.

There were actually control nuggets in the text nugget example from the previous post. The variable declarations at the top of the file (lines 4 – 10) are control nuggets.

Below is another example file that uses code nuggets. I like to separate my design patterns. project connections, and package generation into separate files. The BimlScript shown below is from a slightly altered “caller file”, the file that I would execute to create the SSIS packages that should follow a specified design pattern. This caller file is generating Type 1 slowly changing dimensions.

Meagan also includes a couple of Biml scripts to explain control nuggets, so check those out.

Meagan Longoria has started a series on Biml code nuggets and has started with text nuggets:

Text nuggets evaluate the expression they contain and then replace the text nugget with the string representation of the value of the expression. I use them often to switch out names of packages, tasks, and components as well as source and destination tables in SSIS development when creating packages based upon a design pattern.

Text nuggets start with <#= and end with #>. Notice there is an equals sign at the beginning of the text nugget but not at the end.

Text nuggets are very useful. You can include complex business logic in the expressions. And the expression result can be any data type. The BimlScript compiler will automatically convert it to text before replacing the code nugget with the result. Like all code nuggets, text nuggets can be a single line or multiple lines.

Read the whole thing.

Dave Ballantyne has put together a Biml script to create complex Excel spreadsheets from data sets:

Anyway,  i’ve combined these two pain points to create a BIML routine that uses EPPlus to output multi-sheeted Excel spreadsheet reliably and fast.

At the moment its very basic , take SQL statements and output the data to an excel file, but in time i will be hoping to create some meta data to start ‘getting the crayons out’ and making them look a bit more pretty.

Check out his GitHub repo for more details.

Catherine Wilhelmsen explains why you cannot create project parameters using Biml:

SSIS project parameters do not work the same way as SSIS packages. All project parameters are stored as XML elements in a single XML document for the entire project called Project.params. This is the core reason why packages have a good overwrite story while parameters have a poor overwrite story.

It should be obvious that BimlExpress can’t just overwrite your Project.params file. Of course, BimlExpress would be creating the parameters you specified in your BimlScripts, but it would also be overwriting any parameters you might have created manually. If you are a Biml purist, you might not care about this, because you would be fine with creating all of your project parameters through Biml. Unfortunately, most Biml users are not Biml purists – and even fewer development teams are Biml purists.

It’s a bit of a tricky situation for those cases in which you do want a pure Biml solution, and I’m glad Catherine got down to the bottom of it.

There’s a Biml user group in Amsterdam and Koos van Strien took notes:

• Historically, Varigence has always given away lots of their work for free, and they’ll continue to do so. There are few (maybe no) companies giving this percentage of their work away for free, without having the barrier set at “if you want to start working really, you need our paid product”)

• When features are introduced as free, they will stay free forever. Sometimes this means the introduction of features in the free product needs to be postponed to see the complete impact.

• According to Scott, this is shown in the release of Biml Express: they could’ve easily dropped some features and move it into the paid versions of Biml, but they didn’t. Only added new features.

• The “free while in beta” announcement on Biml Online is mainly a lawyer thing – you can expect BimlOnline to remain free too.

• If a good SaaS-model is developed, the tools will all be free. But we’re not there yet…

This sounds like it was a pretty long discussion with Scott Currie and I’m insanely jealous that there’s a Biml user group but it’s nowhere near me…

Catherine Wilhelmsen introduces us to BimlExpress:

BimlExpress is a free Visual Studio add-in for working with Biml in your SSIS projects. It allows you to add and edit Biml files, generate SSIS packages from Biml, and the code editor is fully featured with syntax coloring, error highlighting and intellisense.

If you are already using BIDS Helper, you will see that BimlExpress works the same way and includes all the same Biml features as in BIDS Helper – just with a new and improved code editor. No more squiggly red lines, yay!

For normal Biml purposes, I see some benefit.  But to me, the biggest benefit is when presenting:  a common question which comes up during Biml talks is, “Why does Intellisense say you have so many errors?”  A superior code editor is well worth the download.