Category: Integration Services

This sounds similar to SSIS precedence constraints, but there are a couple of big differences.
SSIS allows us to define expressions to be evaluated to determine if the next task should be executed.
SSIS allows us to choose whether we handle multiple constraints as a logical AND or a logical OR. In other words, do we need all constraints to be true or just one.
ADF V2 activity dependencies are always a logical AND. While we can design control flows in ADF similar to how we might design control flows in SSIS, this is one of several differences. Let’s look at an example.

Meagan gives us three methods of replicating SSIS functionality using ADF V2, so check it out.

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An Update To ssisUnit

Published 2018-09-17 by Kevin Feasel

Bartosz Ratajczyk has added some functionality to ssisUnit:

Second – you can get and set the properties of the project and its elements. Like – overwriting project connection managers (I designed it with this particular need on my mind). You can now set the connection string the different server (or database) – in the PropertyPath of the PropertyCommand use \Project\ConnectionManagers, write the name of the connection manager with the extension, and use one of the Properties. You can do it during the Test setup (or all tests setup), but not during the test suite setup, as ssisUnit is not aware of the project until it loads it into the memory.

Good on Bartosz for resurrecting a stable but moribund project and adding some enhancements.

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Azure Data Factory V2 Or SSIS?

Published 2018-09-14 by Kevin Feasel

Merrill Aldrich explains the differences between Azure Data Factory V2 and SQL Server Integration Services:

The next consideration is a bit more involved if you are new to data integration. Both of these tools excel at transporting data from place to place, but they have important differences in terms of what you can do to modify the data in transit. As a matter of emphasis, ADF has more features geared toward moving the data than performing any complex transformation along the way. SSIS, on the other hand, was built with a large library of transformations that you can chain together to make elaborate data flows including lookups, matching, splitting data, and more.
The tools also overlap quite a lot. In projects this seems to lead to the question of whether you’ll transform the data “in flight” using Extract Transform Load (ETL), or instead move the data to a destination where it’ll be transformed using Extract Load Transform (ELT).

These are not “pretty much the same thing” and Merrill does a good job of explaining what those differences in design mean for the products.

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Getting Anatomical With SSIS Catalog Compare

Published 2018-09-04 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Leonard shows off parts of SSIS Catalog Compare. First up is the catalog reference script:

As you may glean from this analysis of one script generated for SSIS Catalog References management, the Transact-SQL for scripting SSIS Catalog artifacts in SSIS Catalog Compare is rigorous and includes several existence and error-condition checks prior to performing any updates. The script is designed to be idempotent, as well, meaning the script will succeed and the results will be repeatable and predictable each time the script is executed – and that the script itself is re-executable.

Then an environment script:

The final portion of the script checks for the existence of the Environment Variables and responds accordingly. This is a three-step process:
Drop the Environment Variable if it exists.
Create the Environment Variable.
Set the Environment Variable value.
If the Environment Variable exists the script drops it. Why? SSIS Catalog Compare wants to be sure the environment variable is created with the proper data type and initial values.

And connection literals:

These messages are intended to be copied and stored in the Notes field of a ticketing system in a DevOps enterprise. Note the detail contained herein:

Script Name – the path to the file used to perform the operation.
Generated From – the SQL Server instance of the SSIS Catalog host from which the script was generated.
Catalog Name – redundant at present because all SSIS Catalogs are named “SSISDB.”
Folder Name – the name of the SSIS Catalog Folder that contains the scripted artifact.
Project Name – the name of the SSIS Project that contains the scripted artifact.
Project Connection Name – the name of the SSIS Project Connection.
Generated By – the name of the enterprise account used to generate the artifact’s script.
- Note: SSIS Catalog Compare respects the security model of the SSIS Catalog. Windows Authentication is required to perform many SSIS Catalog operations.
Generated Date – the date and time the script was generated.
Generated From – the version of CatalogBase used in the generation of the artifact script.
- Executing On – the name of the machine on which CatalogBase was running.
Deployed to Instance – the SQL Server instance hosting the target SSIS Catalog.
Deploy Date – the date and time the deployment script was executed.
Deploy By – the enterprise account used to deploy the artifact script.

Andy has put a lot of thought into SSIS Catalog Compare, so go check it out.

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When MS_SSISServerCleanupJobLogin Is Orphaned

Published 2018-08-16 by Kevin Feasel

Sreekanth Bandarla noticed a problem in cleaning up SSIS metadata:

Couple of weeks ago I was analyzing a server for space and noticed SSISDB database was abnormally huge (this Instance was running just a handful of packages). I noticed couple of internal schema tables in SSISDB were huge (with some hundreds of millions of rows), well that’s not right. There should be SSIS Server maintenance job which SQL server creates to purge older entries based on the retention settings right? My immediate action was to check the retention period set and what’s the status of the job. As I suspected, the job was failing (looks like this has been failing since ages) with below error.
The job failed. The Job was invoked by Schedule 9 (SSISDB Scheduler). The last step to run was step 1 (SSIS Server Operation Records Maintenance).
Execute as Login failed for the requested login ‘##MS_SSISServerCleanupJobLogin##’

Read on for the root cause and solution.

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Writing ssisUnit Tests With C#

Published 2018-08-13 by Kevin Feasel

Bartosz Ratajczyk shows us how to create ssisUnit tests in MSTest with C#:

In the post about using MSTest framework to execute ssisUnit tests, I used parts of the ssisUnit API model. If you want, you can write all your tests using this model, and this post will guide you through the first steps. I will show you how to write one of the previously prepared XML tests using C# and (again) MSTest.
Why MSTest? Because I don’t want to write some application that will contain all the tests I want to run, display if they pass or not. When I write the MSTest tests, I can run them using the Test Explorer in VS, using a command line, or in TFS.

UIs are great for learning how to do things and for one-off actions, but writing code scales much better in terms of time.

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SSIS TargetServerVersion Versus ProjectVersion

Published 2018-08-08 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Leonard explains the differences between the TargetServerVersion and ProjectVersion properties in SQL Server Integration Services:

Since I am still adjusting to the 9.5 hour time zone shift, I decided to poke around social media. My friend and brother from another mother, TJay Belt, had tagged me in a tweet. TJay was looking for answers about updating an SSIS 2014 project in SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) for Visual Studio 2017.
TJay and I started this conversation a couple days ago when he mentioned a team member installed Visual Studio 2017 and experienced difficulties getting SSIS 2012 packages to execute in the debugger.
I don’t think I blogged about it, but I had some interesting experiences upgrading to Visual Studio 2017 and SQL Server Data Tools for VS 2017. The sum of my experience was: uninstall everything, then install Visual Studio, then install SSDT.

Read on for the answer.

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Building OData Sources In Biml

Published 2018-07-25 by Kevin Feasel

Cathrine Wilhelmsen gives us a workaround for no native OData support in Biml:

As of July 2018, there is no built-in Biml support for OData. To work with OData in Biml, you have to create a custom source and connection manager. This requires more Biml code than built-in functions like OleDbSource and may look a little overwhelming at first. But don’t worry! You don’t have to start from scratch.
In this blog post, we will first look at the properties of the OData Connection Manager and how to script it in Biml. Then, we will do the same for the OData Source. Finally, we will tie it all together and create a complete SSIS package that you can use a starting point for your own projects.

There’s a quick and easy solution but definitely read the whole thing to catch any oddities which might arise from reverse engineering your SSIS packages.

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Using Azure Data Lake Analytics With Integration Services

Published 2018-07-24 by Kevin Feasel

Yanan Cai announces that Azure Data Lake Analytics has a new task in the Azure Feature Pack for SQL Server Integration Services:

With ADLA Task in Azure Feature Pack, you can now orchestrate and create U-SQL jobs as a part of the SSIS workflow to process big data in the cloud. As ADLA is a serverless analytics service, you don’t need to worry about cluster creation and initialization, all you need is an ADLA account to start your analytics.
You can get the U-SQL script from different places by using SSIS built-in functions. You can:

Edit the inline U-SQL script in ADLA Task to call table valued functions and stored procedures in your U-SQL databases.
Use the U-SQL files stored in ADLS or Azure Blob Storage by leveraging Azure Data Lake Store File System Task and Azure Blob Download Task.
Use the U-SQL files from local file directly using SSIS File Connection Manager.
Use an SSIS variable that contains the U-SQL statements. You can also use SSIS expression to generate the U-SQL statements dynamically.

Read on for more information and a link to download the pack.

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SSIS: Target Server Version Leads To Script Task “Corruption”

Published 2018-07-24 by Kevin Feasel

Slava Murygin walks us through an ugly-looking error with an easy fix:

There are probably a lot of SSIS corruption errors, but that is one that is very easy to solve.
The whole error message is texted like this:
Script Task:Error: The Script Task is corrupted.
Script Task:Error: There were errors during task validation.
Script Task:Error: There was an exception while loading Script Task from XML: System.Exception: The Script Task “ST_74aca886806a416fa34ae89cac6237c2” uses version 15.0 script that is not supported in this release of Integration Services. To run the package, use the Script Task to create a new VSTA script. In most cases, scripts are converted automatically to use a supported version, when you open a SQL Server Integration Services package in %SQL_PRODUCT_SHORT_NAME% Integration Services. at Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Tasks.ScriptTask.ScriptTask.LoadFromXML(XmlElement elemProj, IDTSInfoEvents events)
That error came from an execution of SSIS package and it points that particular Script task is corrupted.
It is very confusing, because if you try to run the same package in the Visual Studio everything will be fine:

I’d consider the initial error that “The Script Task is corrupted.” to be a bad error message. The longer description is helpful and explains the problem, but the word “corruption” has a certain scary connotation to DBAs and tossing it around when you really mean to say “Fix your target version” is unhelpful.

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