How to run SSIS packages from an external application? - ssis

Question

I have an application I am writing that accepts files of various formats. Then I write code for each format (csv, excel, xml) to convert it and enter it into a SQL Server database. This is fine but I was just looking into SSIS and wondering if this would help.
The main question though is how do I run these packages within my own code? Is it easy to pass parameters? If I move this web app to another server does it depend on other components being on that server (maybe SQL Server 2012 installed)? Or is it just some DLLs I can reference from my web app?
All the demos I see are about using the SSIS tool but I am more interested in how difficult it is to call packages with parameters from my code.

Answer 1

The BIDS/SSDT installation includes a complete client SDK that makes it pretty simple to run SSIS packages via code.
This MSDN article explains how to load and run a package via C# in detail but the actual code boils down to:
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime;
.
.
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Application app = new Application();
Package pkg = app.LoadPackage(PKG_FILE_NAME, null);
DTSExecResult pkgResults = pkg.Execute();
The Package object has a lot of properties and methods you can look into, in particular there is a Parameters collection that allows you to pass parameters into your SSIS package before execution.

Answer 2

There is a very cool library called EzAPI where you can generate your own packages and call them from within C#. It gives you a lot of flexibility to generate SSIS on the fly and execute.
http://sqlsrvintegrationsrv.codeplex.com/releases/view/21238
I built a couple console apps inside this project to test some of these methods and you might find the examples useful:
https://github.com/thevinnie/SyncDatabases
Look at "BuildingAPackage" and "BuildALookupPackage"

Answer 3

You can programmatically build SSIS packages using C# or VB.NET and then run the packages. You can also load an existing package programmatically to execute it. I have little experience with building packages this way since most of the packages can be built easily using the following tools.
Read the article Building Packages Programmatically on MSDN for more details.
I feel that it is easier to build the packages through these IDEs depending on which version of SSIS you are targeting. You can also create initial packages through SQL Server Import and Export Wizard and save the SSIS packages to the local disk, which you can later modify according to your needs.
SSIS Version Development IDE Visual Studio Shell
------------------- ----------------------------------------------- -------------------
SSIS 2005 Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) Visual Studio 2005
SSIS 2008 - 2008 R2 Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) Visual Studio 2008
SSIS 2012 SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) Visual Studio 2010
You need to reference the appropriate SSIS specific DLLs in your code to create/load SSIS packages.
However, you will need a SQL Server Integration Services license to run the package. You cannot simply reference the DLLs alone. The license is usually part of your SQL Server license, if you already have one.
Response to your comment:
We will have SQL 2012 or 2008R2 on a separate server.. So I just need to paste the needed DLLs on my web server and reference them. correct ?
The packages will execute on that server. You are just remotely invoking to execute them and you should reference the appropriate DLLs in the code within your web/other form of external application. I usually schedule the packages to run on the database servers under SQL Server Agent Job. You can try that if that is an option for you.

Answer 4

Package parameters are read-only from an external application. You'll need to pass them in as variables (which I have done). If you are dealing with an existing package with parameters, you may consider writing a script task that populates the parameters from the variables (which I have not done).