Passing an Object from a Parent Package To a Child

Occasionally, you may run into the need to pass values between packages. In most cases, you can use a Parent Package Variable configuration to pass the value of a variable in the calling (or parent) package to the called (or child) package. However, Parent Package Variable configurations can’t be set up on variables of type Object. Fortunately, you can work around this pretty easily, thanks to the fact that the calling package variables are inherently accessible in the called packages. 

I’ve set up a sample parent and child package to illustrate this. The parent package is straightforward. It uses an Execute SQL task to populate an object variable named TestVar with a recordset object, and then calls the child package.

The child package has a Foreach Loop Container to iterate over the recordset object. It has a Script task that is used to copy the parent package’s variable (TestVar) to a local variable named LocalVar. This is the variable that the Foreach Loop is configured to use. Why copy the value? If you don’t have a local variable to reference in the Foreach Loop, it won’t validate properly.

The script in Copy Variable is pretty simple. It relies on the fact that you can reference parent package variables inherently, as they are included in the collection of variables accessible in the local package. The script just copies the value from one variable to the other, so that the Foreach Loop will have something to do.

public void Main()

{

    Variables vars = null;

    Dts.VariableDispenser.LockForWrite("User::LocalVar");

    Dts.VariableDispenser.LockForRead("User::TestVar");

    Dts.VariableDispenser.GetVariables(ref vars);


    vars["User::LocalVar"].Value = vars["User::TestVar"].Value;

    vars.Unlock();


    Dts.TaskResult = (int)ScriptResults.Success;

}
Please note that for this to work, you cannot have a variable in the child package with the same name as the variable in the parent package. If you do, the local variable will hide the parent variable. Outside of that, this works really well for passing object values between packages. The same technique can also be used in reverse to send values back to the parent package, if you have that need.
The sample has been uploaded to my Skydrive. Let me know if you have any questions.