Monthly Archives: May 2007

Dynamically Unpivoting Columns to Rows

There’s been a few questions on the forums recently about taking column values and pivoting them to rows. For example, I might have an input file with 5 columns: a key column and 4 category columns. Key; C1; C2; C3; C41;1;2;3;42;1;2;3;43;1;2;3;44;1;2;3;4 … Continue reading

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BIDS Helper 0.9 Beta is Released

The 0.9 beta of BIDS Helper has been released on CodePlex. It’s got a lot of great features for working with Analysis Services, and some future enhancements will include SSIS.

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Handling Varying Columns, Part 2

In Handling Flat Files with Varying Numbers of Columns, I showed an example of parsing a flat file with an inconsistent number of columns. I used a script component, but Jamie commented that the same thing could be accomplished through … Continue reading

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Handling Flat Files with Varying Numbers of Columns

5/15 Update – I added Part 2 to show how to do the same thing with a Conditional Split and a Derived Column transform, per Jamie’s feedback (see the comments on this post). A common question on the forums has been how to … Continue reading

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Handling Multiple Errors in SSIS

[edited on 12/14/2007 to correct an error in the text around string handling – the samples were not modified] One actual failure in SSIS can trigger a whole series of error messages. For example, failure to convert a column value … Continue reading

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Checking for Overlapping Rows in a Slowly Changing Dimension

A question was posted on the MSDN forums about validating that there are no overlapping rows in a slowly changing dimension (SCD). It is common to use a start and end date in a type 2 SCD to designate when … Continue reading

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