Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Loading Mutliple Files (Contd..)

I had mentioned in my previous post on how to handle auditing of multiple files. While auditing the file loads, the name of the file loaded is stored in a sql server table once the data flow is completed successfully.
Within the For Each Loop Container, I added a execute sql task after the data flow task. The execute sql task takes in the user defined variable sFileName and passes it as a parameter to an INSERT statement. This can be modified into a stored procedure in case there need to be more details added about the file loaded. Once the execute sql task runs it inserts the value of the user defined variable into a table. The table can be queried to find out what files have been loaded successfully. I have included the image of the Control Flow below.
The name of the execute sql task is Audit FileNames.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Loading Multiple files...

Recently I came across a scenario where in i had to load multiple excel files into a database table in sql server.The excel files reside in a folder from where these files need to be loaded into a sql server table. At first i worked on the data flow task where i import one excel file into the table. The reason being i need to build out the connection string for the excel source. I dragged a Excel source to the data flow task editor and a OLE Db destination data source. I set the source folder and the file for the excel source and also choose the first row has column names option.

This sets the connection for the excel source like this:
Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=C:\Ramdas\SSIS\Sheet1.xls ;Extended Properties="EXCEL 8.0;HDR=YES";
Once the excel source is set, connect it to the destination and do the required mappings for the destination table. Test the data flow task to make sure the data from a single excel can be imported.

In the Control flow editor, create a string variable called sfilename of type string and set the value of this to the excel file with the path (In this example: "C:\Ramdas\SSIS\Sheet1.xls), make sure the scope of the variable is at the package level.

Drag an For Each Loop Container, make sure the data flow task is inside the container. Edit the For Each Loop Container, choose the ForEach file enumerator in the Collection window, choose the file path and choose the option Full qualified under retrieve file name. In the variables section choose the variable sFilename and set the index to 0.


In the Data Flow task editor, right click on the Excel Connection Manager,Choose Properties, within the properties choose Expressions. In the Expressions dropdown Choose connection string. In the expression editor window copy and paste the Connection String of Excel connection manager, replace the fully qualified name with the user defined variable. The expression should be like the following:
"Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=" + @[User::sFilename]+" ;Extended Properties=\"Excel 8.0;HDR=YES\";"

The backslash in this expression is critical since they are the escape characters. When the evaluate expression is clicked the following statement should appear:
Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=C:\Ramdas\SSIS\Sheet1.xls ;Extended Properties="Excel 8.0;HDR=YES";
Once the expression is tested, click ok.

Now going back to the Control Flow the ForEach Container can be executed and multiple files within the source folder would be loaded to the database. In order to make sure that multiple files are loaded one can create an other table in the sql server database and capture the value in the user defined variable into a table.

I would like to thank the author of the blog,Matthew Roche: http:\\bi-polar23.blogspot.com.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Left Outer Join...

When one writes complex queries usually there are lot of tables are joined, the query becomes little bit more involved when Left Outer Join or Right Outer Join is involved. In case the query is like a straight left outer join query , the one listed below:

Select Count(*)
From A
Left Join B
On A.AID = B.BID
Where A.AID Is Null

It will always return 0 records if there is no null AID in table A. When a left outer join is involved with other tables which are connected by inner joins, care needs to taken while performing checks like Where A.AID Is Null. I had an issue where a particular query joins and left outer joins was working fine, one fine day after the data was loaded, the query was taking for forever to complete. I was able to find out that the underlying data in the tables had chnaged which caused the query to take a long time. On further analysis in the WHERE clause of the query there was a check for a column to be NULL and this was combined with a OR clause.
It was some thing like : Where A.AID Is Null OR (cond1 and cond2), this was causing the query to run forever. The fix for this was we re-organized the query into 2 parts, the first part of the query runs with a WHERE clause checking for null, the second query runs with the other conditions listed after the OR clause. This caused the query to speed up tremendously and gave us the desired results.

In short when having complex queries and left outer joins it is best to test the queries with different variations of data to make sure the query returns the desired results.





Tuesday, August 9, 2011

SQL Server Collation...

SQL Server Collation is a setting which usually gets set at the time of SQL Server Installation. At the time of database restores from backups which have been taken from other SQL Servers there could be collation mismatches. This could lead sometime to errors like this:
Msg 468, Level 16, State 9, Line 1
Cannot resolve the collation conflict between "SQL_Latin1_General_Pref_CP437_CI_AS" and "SQL_Latin1_General_CP850_BIN" in the equal to operation.
One needs to check certain aspects like collation before doing a restore. Usually the server collation is the baseline, the tempdb follows the SQL Server Collation. A database on a server could be of a different collation from the Server Collation. In order to check the collation of the databases one can run the following query:


select name, collation_name from sys.databases.

The SQL Server Collation can be checked by right clicking on the server and click properties:




Friday, August 5, 2011

Data Viewer (SSIS)...

When designing and testing on data flow task, one of the aspects that is tested is how the data is getting from source to destination data source. While testing the SSIS packages one might encounter issues in the data flow task, one of the options available is the Data Viewer. This option can be chosen in the data flow task of an SSIS package. With the Data flow task, right click on the connector which connects the source and destination data sources. Choose the Data Viewer Option, this would open up the Data Flow Path Editor.


On the left side of the window there is a option for Data Viewer, highlight it and click the Add button. This would open up the Configure Data Viewer Window. This window has two tabs General and Grid. In the General tab one can choose from four types:
Grid,Histogram,Scatter Plot(x,y),Column Chart.


Except for the Grid option the other three options give an idea o\about the data in a graphical format. In the Grid tab one can configure what columns need to be displayed in the Data Viewer. Once the columns are chosen and click the OK button and exit out of the data flow path editor, the data viewer is ready for use. When the data flow executes the configured data viewer pops up with the column headings and data in a grid.
DataViewer Popup window: