Problem with the row count transform - ssis

I currently deployed an SSIS package (Developed on the 2005 version) (developed on my local server) in a pre production environment for testing. I have used the Row count transform to get a count of good/bad records. It works fine on my local system . However when i deploy this on the pre prod server, the row count does not work! (as in it does not recognize the vairbales i have assigned to the relevant transofm - no drop down abvaliable in the variables attribute part. tried deleting and adding a new transoform.. no luck.
Strangely this does not work for any of the other packages also present/deployed on the same server (tried this out by dropping an rc tramsform onto an existing package... same problem)
Any suggestions?
Thanks a tonne

If you are having problem with the row count transform, another alternative that we use here at my company is creating a script component and incrementing a rowcnt variable by one. The performance is just as good-just add this code:
Public Overrides Sub PostExecute()
MyBase.PostExecute()
Me.Variables.rowcnt = Me.Variables.rowcnt + 1
End Sub

This certainly seems odd. Are you saying that when you are in the Advanced Editor for Row Count, under Custom Properties, that the drop down beside VariableName has no options? You should at least see all of the System:: variables.
If the User:: variables are not listed, my first suspicion is that they do not have the correct scope to be visible in the Data Flow Task where you have your RowCount.
When you go up to the Control Flow, and get the Variables list, do you see your user variable there? What is the scope of it?
Note that I recognize that none of this fits with "it works locally but doesn't work when copied to the server", but it is at least where I would start...

Related

SSIS - Loop Through Active Directory

Disclaimer: new to SSIS and Active Directory
I have a need to extract all users within a particular Active Directory (AD) domain and import them into Excel. I have followed this: https://www.itnota.com/query-ldap-in-visual-studio-ssis/ in order to create my SSIS package. My SQL is:
LDAP://DC=JOHN,DC=JANE,DC=DOE;(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(name=a*));Name,sAMAccountName
As you know there is a 1,000 row limit when pulling from the AD. In my SQL I currently have (name=a*) to test the process and it works. I need to know how to setup a loop with variables to pull all records and import into Excel (or whatever you experts recommend). Also, how do I know what the other field names are that are available to pull?
Thanks in advance.
How do I see what's in Active Directory
Tool recommendations are off topic for the site but a tool that you can download, no install required, is AD Explorer It's a MS tool that allows you to view your domain. Highly recommend people that need to see what's in AD use something like this as it shows you your basic structure.
What's my domain controller?
Start -> Command Prompt
Type set | find /i "userdnsdomain" and look for USERDNSDOMAIN and put that value in the connect dialog and I save it because I don't want to enter this every time.
Search/Find and then look yourself up. Here I'm going to find my account by using my sAMAccountName
The search results show only one user but there could have been multiples since I did a contains relationship.
Double clicking the value in the bottom results section causes the under pane window to update with the details of the search result.
This is nice because while the right side shows all the properties associated to my account, it's also updated the left pane to navigate to the CN. In my case it's CN=Users but again, it could be something else in your specific environment.
You might discover an interesting categorization for your particular domain. At a very large client, I discovered that my target users were all under a CN
(Canonical Name, I think) so I could use that in my AD query.
There are things you'll see here that you sure would like to bring into a data flow but you won't be able to. Like the memberOf that's a complex type and there's no equivalent in the data flow data types for it. I think Integer8 is also something that didn't work.
Loop the loop
The "trick" here is that we'll need to take advantage of the
The name of the AD provider has changed since I last looked at this. In VS 2017, I see the OLE DB Provider name as "OLE DB Provider for Microsoft Directory Service"
Put in your query and you should get results back. Let that happen so the metadata is set.
An ADO.NET source does not support parameterization as the OLE DB does. However, you can apply an Expression on the Data Flow which surfaces the component and that's what we'll do.
Click out of the Data Flow and back into the Control Flow and right click on the Data Flow and select Properties. In that properties window, find Expressions and click the ellipses ... Up pops the Property Expressions Editor
Find the ADO.NET source under Property and in the Expressions section, click the Ellipses.
Here, we'll use your same source query just to prove we're doing the right things
"LDAP://DC=JOHN,DC=JANE,DC=DOE;(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(name=" + "a" + "*));Name,sAMAccountName"
We're doing string building here so the problem we're left to solve is how we can substitute something for the "a" in the above query.
The laziest route would be to
Create an SSIS variable of type String called CurrentLetter and initialize it to a
Update the expression we just created to be "LDAP://DC=JOHN,DC=JANE,DC=DOE;(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(name=" + #[USer::CurrentLetter] + "*));Name,sAMAccountName"
Add a Foreach Loop Container (FELC) to your Control Flow.
Configure the FELC with an enumerator of "Foreach Item Enumerator"
Click the Columns...
Click Add (this results in Column 0 with data type String) so click OK
Fill the collection with each letter of the alphabet
In the Variable Mappings tab, assign Variable User::CurrentLetter to Index 0
Click OK
Old blog posts on the matter because I like clicks
https://billfellows.blogspot.com/2011/04/active-directory-ssis-data-source.html
http://billfellows.blogspot.com/2013/11/biml-active-directory-ssis-data-source.html

Me syntax working instead of writing full control adress. Why?

I am kind of new to VBA programming in Access and I have banged upon strange thing. I have system of myListbox (multi-choice, two of them in testing regime, planning 5 total) to filter myReport contained in subform container by selected items in those listboxes.
Switching "On" filter works kind of fine (I will address it in different question after doing some research first), but switching filter off turned out to be problem. I was getting error message described here.
Managed to find a workaround. Since I have myReport bound to control in parent form, I am not switch off filter, instead I am changing it to resemble the bound field criteria, after that switch it off.
Code:
Forms![myForm]![myReport].Report.Filter = "((sourceQuery.fieldForBoundControl)=Forms![myForm]![boundControl])"
Me.FilterOn = False
but if I try this:
Forms![myForm]![myReport].Report.Filter = "((sourceQuery.fieldForBoundControl)=Forms![myForm]![boundControl])"
Forms![myForm]![myReport].Report.FilterOn = False
...or any other combination, or simply turning it off, I get error messages and procedure termination. Why?
Is my solution correct for future working of the app or I my setting myself for another Access trap?

SSIS Errors for simple CSV Data Flow

Sorry to darken your day with my troubles, but SSIS has broken me! I am new to SSIS and I just seem to be misunderstanding it.
For background: I have a few versions of a basic package that includes a Foreach Loop container and a Data Flow with a few Derived Columns that imports CSV files into a SQL Server Staging table. It is very straightforward and does include an Execute SQL task and a File Move but those work fine. The issues are with the Foreach loop and the Data Flow.
I have one version of this package (let’s call it “A”) that seemed to be working fine. It would process multiple files in a folder, insert records into the staging table, properly execute the SQL Statements, and move the files to Archive. Everything seemed fine until I carefully QA’d the process. Turns out it was duplicating the data from one file, and never importing the data from a second Source File! Yet, the second/dupe round of data included the Source Filename (via a derived column) of the second file (but the data from the first). So it looked like I had successfully processed BOTH files until I looked at the actual data and saw that none of the values from the second source file were ever written to the Staging table.
Once I discovered this, I figured that the problem was in the Foreach loop and how I setup the different file path & name variables. So, I decided to try to make a new version of the package. I started by copying package A and created package B. In B, I deleted the Source Connection manager and created a new Connection Manager along with all new file & path variables. I then tried to cleanup/fix/replace various elements in my Data Flow and Foreach loop. In the process, I discovered that the Advanced Mappings from A – which DID work – were virtually all setup as String (even the Currency and Date columns). That did not seem right, so I modified each source money column by changing to data type Currency, and changed each date-related column to data type Date.
What followed has been dozens and dozens of Errors and I cannot get Package B to run. I have even changed all of the B data types back to String (mirroring the setup in Package A which DID work). But, still no joy.
This leads me to ask a few questions to those of you smarter than I:
1) Why can’t SSIS interpret Source CSV data using the proper data type? I.e. why do I need to set every Input column as a STRING when some columns are clearly & completely Numeric, Currency or Dates? (Yes, the Source CSV files are VERY clean – most don’t even have NULLS)
a. When I do change the Advanced mapping for a date-related Source column to Date, I get the ever present error message: [Flat File Source [30]] Error: Data conversion failed. The data conversion for column "Settle Date" returned status value 2 and status text "The value could not be converted because of a potential loss of data.".
2) When I reset the data types back to String in package B, I still get errors – usually Truncation errors (and Yes – I have adjusted the length to 250 in one of these columns).
a. Error Message: "The value could not be converted because of a potential loss of data.".
b. When I reset the Mappings to ignore the column (as a test), it throws a similar error at the next column.
3) Any ideas why Package A would dupe a file’s data and not process the second file, yet throw no errors and move both to Archive?
4) Why does the Data Viewer appear to have parsing errors (it shows data in the wrong columns) but when you use the Copy data feature in the data viewer and paste it into Excel, all of the data lines up perfectly?
5) Are there any tips & tricks that a rookie SSIS user needs to understand and which might not be apparent through the documentation and searching web articles as well as this site?
I can provide further details if they will help, but these packages are really very simple and should not be causing me this much frustration.
THANKS for any insights.
DGP
Wow seems like you have a lot of ssis issues... I think the reason for the same file being extracted is because of the the way your 'variable mappings' is defined.
Have you had a look and followed this guide:
https://www.simple-talk.com/sql/ssis/ssis-basics-introducing-the-foreach-loop-container/
Hope this helps.
Shaheen
Thanks Tab & Shaheen,
To all SSIS rookies - please learn from my mistakes!
It appears that my issue was actually in how I identified the TEXT QUALIFIER in the Connection Manager. I had entered "" and that was causing problems with how my columns were being parsed. The parsing issues caused unexpected values to appear in some of the columns and that was causing the errors in the package.
When I tried changing the the Text Qualifier to only ONE double quote - " - the whole thing worked!
As I mentioned - and as Shaheen suspected - my initial issues with the duplicate processing was probably due to how I setup the foreach loop. I had already fixed that, bit was still getting errors until I fixed the Text Qualifier.
I have only tested it a few times but it looks like that was the issue.
Thanks for the contributions.
DGP

Importing flat file which has changing column order using SSIS [duplicate]

Problem.
I regularly receive a feed files from different suppliers. Although the column names are consistent the problem comes when some suppliers send text files with more or less columns in there feed file.
Furthermore the arrangement of these files are inconsistent.
Other than the Dynamic data flow task provided by Cozy Roc is there another way I could import these files. I am not a C# guru but i am driven torwards using a "Script Task" control flow or "Script Component" Data flow task.
Any suggestion, samples or direction will greatly be appreciated.
http://www.cozyroc.com/ssis/data-flow-task
Some forums
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic525799-148-1.aspx#bm526400
http://www.bidn.com/forums/microsoft-business-intelligence/integration-services/26/dynamic-data-flow
Off the top of my head, I have a 50% solution for you.
The problem
SSIS really cares about meta data so variations in it tend to result in exceptions. DTS was far more forgiving in this sense. That strong need for consistent meta data makes use of the Flat File Source troublesome.
Query based solution
If the problem is the component, let's not use it. What I like about this approach is that conceptually, it's the same as querying a table-the order of columns does not matter nor does the presence of extra columns matter.
Variables
I created 3 variables, all of type string: CurrentFileName, InputFolder and Query.
InputFolder is hard wired to the source folder. In my example, it's C:\ssisdata\Kipreal
CurrentFileName is the name of a file. During design time, it was input5columns.csv but that will change at run time.
Query is an expression "SELECT col1, col2, col3, col4, col5 FROM " + #[User::CurrentFilename]
Connection manager
Set up a connection to the input file using the JET OLEDB driver. After creating it as described in the linked article, I renamed it to FileOLEDB and set an expression on the ConnectionManager of "Data Source=" + #[User::InputFolder] + ";Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Extended Properties=\"text;HDR=Yes;FMT=CSVDelimited;\";"
Control Flow
My Control Flow looks like a Data flow task nested in a Foreach file enumerator
Foreach File Enumerator
My Foreach File enumerator is configured to operate on files. I put an expression on the Directory for #[User::InputFolder] Notice that at this point, if the value of that folder needs to change, it'll correctly be updated in both the Connection Manager and the file enumerator. In "Retrieve file name", instead of the default "Fully Qualified", choose "Name and Extension"
In the Variable Mappings tab, assign the value to our #[User::CurrentFileName] variable
At this point, each iteration of the loop will change the value of the #[User::Query to reflect the current file name.
Data Flow
This is actually the easiest piece. Use an OLE DB source and wire it as indicated.
Use the FileOLEDB connection manager and change the Data Access mode to "SQL Command from variable." Use the #[User::Query] variable in there, click OK and you're ready to work.
Sample data
I created two sample files input5columns.csv and input7columns.csv All of the columns of 5 are in 7 but 7 has them in a different order (col2 is ordinal position 2 and 6). I negated all the values in 7 to make it readily apparent which file is being operated on.
col1,col3,col2,col5,col4
1,3,2,5,4
1111,3333,2222,5555,4444
11,33,22,55,44
111,333,222,555,444
and
col1,col3,col7,col5,col4,col6,col2
-1111,-3333,-7777,-5555,-4444,-6666,-2222
-111,-333,-777,-555,-444,-666,-222
-1,-3,-7,-5,-4,-6,-2
-11,-33,-77,-55,-44,-666,-222
Running the package results in these two screen shots
What's missing
I don't know of a way to tell the query based approach that it's OK if a column doesn't exist. If there's a unique key, I suppose you could define your query to have only the columns that must be there and then perform lookups against the file to try and obtain the columns that ought to be there and not fail the lookup if the column doesn't exist. Pretty kludgey though.
Our solution. We use parent child packages. In the parent pacakge we take the individual client files and transform them to our standard format files then call the child package to process the standard import using the file we created. This only works if the client is consistent in what they send though, if they try to change their format from what they agreed to send us, we return the file.

Custom code in Reporting Services report

In Reporting Services I would like to add a parameter that contains data from a custom code block. Ideally, I would be able to run the following code (this is a simple testing example):
Function GetPeriods() As String()
Dim values As System.Collections.ArrayList =
New System.Collections.ArrayList()
For i as integer = 1 to 24
values.Add(i)
Next
Return values.ToArray()
End Function
and put the following in the "Text Field" of the parameter:
=Code.GetPeriods()
However, when I run the report, the parameter I apply this to is disabled and empty. Is there a different technique that should be used? Or am I doing something wrong?
If you're using SQL 2008 Reporting Services then you can have a look at this page which introduces the concept of using custom assemblies.
If you're using SQL 2005 Reporting Services then this link is the one you want.
It's a mostly trivial thing, simply compile your code into a class library and follow the instructions provided to allow your report to reference it.
You are returning an array item (an array of strings) into a text field. Instead, try returning a plain string. That should work. If you would still like to return an array list, you must basically bind it to a list control in your RDL. You can definitely do that with dataset extensions. However, I am not sure if there is any other easy way. Check the proprties of the list control and see if it allows you to directly bind to an array list.
You can create the same stored procedure on SQL Server and load parameter values from that procedure.
To access your members/functions implemented in custom code of SSRS report you should set the access modifier to "Public":
Public Function GetPeriods() As String
...
see article Writing Custom Code in SQL Server Reporting Services
I've been trying to do this same thing, set a simple list of parameter values from report code. None of the links in any of these answers shows how to do this and after quite a bit of digging around I don't think it's even possible. Yes it is possible to get the values from a database query, from a web service, or from a custom assembly, but each of these creates a lot of overhead compared to getting the list from a simple function call like =Code.GetValues(), where the function uses a For loop to create the values.
msvcyc is correct in pointing out that the parameter is expecting a string value, but the function is returning an array. I changed the return type to Array as suggested by prashant sable, but the select list is still grayed out, it does not work. And coldice is correct in saying that the access modifier should be Public.
In my digging around I found an article by James Kovac from 2005 that pointed out why this is not possible. The Parameters class has a get method, but no set method. In the VS 2008 object browser for SSRS 2008 the object name has changed, but it still does not contain a set method (see Microsoft.ReportingServices.Interfaces.IParameter.Name or .Value).
My current workaround is to just hard code the list of values, but if your value list needs to be dynamic then your only choices are database queries, web services, or custom assemblies. I think the easiest workaround of these three is to get the values from the database engine, as suggested by oleksiy.t, as long as you can write a query to return the value list you want. Your list of integers, or my list of time intervals, would both be easy queries to write. Otherwise you will need to use one of the other two workarounds.
I checked your code. The only thing that's wrong is your function returns String(). When I changed your method signature to return Array, it worked fine, in my report.
Change the signature to Function GetPeriods() As Array
Everything I've seen requires parameters and their respective settings to be part of the RDL.
That being said, if you're going to "hardcode" the values, you could create a dataset just for the report, perhaps in XML, or if it needs to be programmatically driven, do it in a web service.