See if a File is Locked

A question that comes up occasionally on the forums is how to determine if a file is being written to by another process. It can cause issues if a file is partially written when a source component starts extracting data from it.

There is a way to check this through a Script Task. The script below attempts to lock the file for writing. If the file is be written to be another process, the attempt to lock it will fail. If the file is available, the attempt will succeed.

Public Sub Main()

    Dim vars As Variables

    Dim file As System.IO.FileStream

    Try

        file = System.IO.File.Open(Dts.Connections("FlatFile").ConnectionString, System.IO.FileMode.Open, System.IO.FileAccess.Write)

    Catch ex As Exception

        Dts.VariableDispenser.LockOneForRead("FileLocked", vars)

        vars("FileLocked").Value = True

        vars.Unlock()

    Finally

        If Not file Is Nothing Then

            file.Close()

        End If

    End Try

    Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success

End Sub

The package needs to have a connection manager that points to the file you want to check (named "FlatFile" in the script above), and a variable ("FileLocked") that is set to True if the file is locked. The variable should be set to False by default. The variable can be used in a precedence constraint to control whether other tasks execute.