SSIS Package Execution from TSQL

I have been learning some SSIS and created a file transformation package to load and convert some data. I have come across 2 major headaches in doing so that i thought i would share.

1st - the deployment. This seemed so complex when i first set about doing it. If you follow the MS articles in BOL you will get most of the way there but they omit the part about security settings. When you deploy the build & deploy package id you encrypt sensitive data with user key it will now work as it will try and use your local workstation account which will not reside on the server. Basically you will need to tell it not to save sensitive data (property setting on the control flow page).

Also if you deploy the settings to a sql server table it appears to save the passwords encrypted! Truth is that it doeasnt save the passwords for user connections to databases etc! So the only way i found to get it to work is to store the password (which is in plain text) in the config! I just dont get that bit - just doesnt seem secure to me.

Next biggy was getting the package to run using the dtsexec util. I wanted to fire in the values for 2 variables i had to allow the package to be dynamic so i could re-use it for multiple files.

Here is the command line i tried running:

EXEC xp_cmdshell

'dtexec /DTS "\File System\DataLoad\DataLoad" /MAXCONCURRENT " -1 " /CHECKPOINTING OFF /REPORTING E /SET "\Package.Variables[User::FileName].Properties[Value]";"c:\data\01052008b.txt"'

Do you see the problem?? No - didnt think so. Its just not obvious. What you cant see from the text above is some CRLF's (line breaks) the i put in improve readability while i was debugging. Turns out that all that will get passed to the package is the text up to the first CRLF!!! Hence my /SET wasnt getting parsed!!

Talk about head/brickwall!

So make sure you keep your command executions on a single line! Even is its huuuuuge!

OPENDATASOURCE or OPENROWSET linked server Error fix

This drove me mental for a while.

If you are trying to open an external file such as a TXT, XLS, CSV using SQL's OPENROWSET or OPENDATASOURCE functionality and keep getting errors that look like the ones below then here is the fix/workaround.

The Errors:

OLE Database provider "Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0" for linked server "(null)"
returned message "Unspecified error".

Msg 7303, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Cannot initialize the data source object of OLE Database provider
"Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0" for linked server "(null)".


The fix:

I tried all the suggestions about SP2, restarting services, setting flags in the SQL settings etc but all to no avail.

What you need to do is visit the link below and download the

2007 Office System Driver: Data Connectivity Components download

Once downloaded and installed on the SQL Server you will notice a new driver in the list of drivers on the server at this path:

SERVER\Server Objects\Linked Servers\Providers

The new driver is called:

Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0

All you then need to do is change your SQL Query to use this new driver rather than the old Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0 one.

Your new connection string should look something like this:

OPENDATASOURCE(''Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0'',
''Data Source=C:\data\;
Extended Properties="Text;HDR=No;FMT=Delimited"'')...['+ @FileN +'#CSV]'

Voila! That should sort you out.

Converting HTML to aspx tip

I need to convert some html to aspx. On the page were loads of images and as i moving stuff into master pages it was going to totally scre the directories up.

As you may know with a server control you can use the sqiggle/tilda (~) in a path so the server resolves the actual path for you when it generated the page.

What you can do to save a lot of time is rather than change all the image controls, for example, is just add a runat="server" to the html control and then do a search and replace on the image url to add the ~. This allows the existing alt text etc to be used without having to convert to a server control - which has different naming conventions for the attributes.

Find out what stored procs have changed

Been ages since ive posted on here as ive been in a cave working on a big project! Ive finally come out and found time to post something useful i found.

I wanted to know what had changed in a database in the last x days to check for things before i did a backup/restore so found the following queries useful!

This fella will tell you the stored procedures that have been modified in the last x days:

SELECT NAME ProcName, create_date Created, modify_date Modified
FROM sys.objects
WHERE type = 'P'
AND DATEDIFF(D,modify_date, GETDATE()) < 3 --Change 7 to any other day value
ORDER BY 3 DESC

This fella will tell you the stored procedures that have been created in the last x days:

SELECT NAME ProcName, create_date Created, modify_date Modified
FROM sys.objects
WHERE type = 'P'
AND DATEDIFF(D,create_date, GETDATE()) < 3
ORDER BY 2 DESC

Very handy!