Convert excel column from General to Date in SSIS - sql-server

I have a nvarchar(50) column in SQL which is of format mm/dd/yyyy. I am trying to import this data in excel using SSIS. In ssis package, I am creating a column Date_1 with datatype Date in Execute SQL task (Since .xlsx file needs to be created dynamically) and in my data flow task I am converting Date_1 to date(DT_DATE). But after data migration when I check my file column Date_1 is of General data type and not Date. Can someone help me how to convert General column to Date

The drop down list you are showing in the Microsoft Excel interface is not related to the data type it is the Number Format property which is used to change the way the value is shown in Excel.
Available number formats
To change this property you need to use Microsoft.Interop.Excel library within a Script Task and change the Excel.Range.NumberFormat property. As example:
Range rg = (Excel.Range)xlWorksheet.Cells[1,1];
rg.EntireColumn.NumberFormat = "MM/dd/yyyy";
References
How to make correct date format when writing data to Excel
How to: Specify Number or Date Format for Cell Content

Related

Date format in Excel file to load to SQL Server

Our business would be providing us a .csv file. One of the columns in the file would be in date format. Now as we know there are many date formats in Excel. The problem is that we need to check whether the date provided is a correct date. It could be in any format like ddmmyyyy, yyyymmdd, dd-mon-yyyy etc basically any format that Excel supports.
We are planning to first load the data in a staging area and the date field would be defined as varchar so that it can accept any data.
Now either using SSIS or via T-SQL, I need to check whether the date provided is actually a date and if it is I need to load it into a different table in YYYYMMDD format.
How do I go about doing the above?
Considering you have your excel data already loaded into a SQL Server table as varchar (you can easily do this using SSIS), something like this would work:
SELECT
case when ISDATE(YOUR_DATE) = 1 then CONVERT(int,YOUR_DATE,112) else null end as MyDate
FROM
YOUR_TABLE
I don't have access to a SQL Server instance at the moment and can't test the code above, so you may need to adapt to your needs, but this is the general idea.
You can also do further research on ISDATE and CONVERT functions in SQL Server. You should be able to achieve what you need combining them together.

SSIS Error importing Excel Date (truncation error)

I am sorry to post what seems a very simple issue but I cannot find an answer and I am wasting days (not just hours at this point). I am fairly new to SSIS and it is just kicking my backside.
Background:
Pretty straightforward SSIS Package to import an Excel sheet into a Staging table in SQL Server. Since I do not want to mislead anyone by using the wrong nomenclature, I will refer to the Excel source as Excel and the SQL Server table as the Target Table.
This package HAS worked before. However, it is now failing because of data truncation for a Date Column. The Excel Column has been formatted as a DATE (and I have tried a few different format options within DATE). The target column is also a DATE column (NOT datetime). The data in Excel is predominantly empty cells with a few sporadic values. I think the errors started when the dates started appearing in the data (rather than just blanks).
I have tried using the Advanced Editor for both sides (Excel & Target) and tried numerous data type settings all around but I keep getting the same failure. I suspect that it is now pretty messed up with the various tests that I have done.
I have also tried adding a Data Conversion transform for the Date field “date[DT_DATE]” – that did not work. AND, I have tried creating a Derived Column - first based on the Excel column and then on the Transformed column. All of those attempts have failed.
Questions:
1) What is the best practice for importing Excel data into SQL Server for DATE Columns?
2) Since this is two very mature Microsoft Apps (Excel & SQL Server) working together, it seems like it should be simple. This leads me to believe that I must be missing some basic concepts here. Can anyone set me straight?
3) How do all of you get an Excel date into SQL Server?
4) What is the trick for synchronizing columns after making edits?
Thanks for any insights you can provide. Sorry to bother you all with what seems pretty simple.
David
Personally I don't think there is a best practice for excel dates, it is always a pain for me.
If you can format the excel file try changing it to 'Text'. it will import as Unicode and not a date. If not, try and convert the column in a "Data Conversion
" task to Unicode
after that is done, you would need to use a "Derived Column" task. Build the date in the format you want.
example for source MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss
Build to be yyyy-MM-dd
SUBSTRING(datecolumn,7,4)+ "-" + SUBSTRING(datecolumn,1,2)+ "-" +SUBSTRING(datecolumn,4,2)
Might be crude, but saves my sanity.
If the date looks something like m/d/yyyy not including 2 values when Jan or something, you will add a few things like this for the month part.
RIGHT("0" + SUBSTRING(datecolumn,1,FINDSTRING(datecolumn,"/"1)-1),2)
Good luck
The main problem when importing Data from excel worksheets is that excel is that each column in excel can have multiple data types or formats, so the same column can contains Dates and Numbers and text or dates with differents formats (Some formats cannot be converted implicitly to dates in SSIS).
If all date value are stored as date (not Text), The best practice to Import dates from an excel worksheet is to convert DATE to Number format "0.000000000" (in excel it is called Serial DateTime) from excel or programmatically using a library like Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel
You can refer to this Link but use the following:
xlCells.NumberFormat = "0.0000000"
Then in SSIS package use a script component to convert it again to Date using DateTime.FromOADate() Function
*Assuming that inColumn is the Date column with a numeric type, add an output column outColumn of type DT_DBTIMESTAMP or DT_DATE and use the following code:
If Not Row.inColumn_IsNull Then
Row.OutColumn = DateTime.FromOADate(CDbl(Row.inColumn))
Else
Row.OutColumn_IsNull = True
End If
Note: When converting column to Number Format, you ignored all formats but still have the date value
To read more about DateTimes in Excel you can refer to this Link
To read more about Date time formats that can be implicitly converted to date in SSIS follow SSIS Source Format Implicit Conversion for Datetime

VB.NET different format date insert into SQL Server

I want to insert data into SQL Server, but I have different format in datagridview data from is "dd/mm/yyyy" and after I see in my SQL Server format is "yyyy/mm/dd" that why I can't use where for update data.
In my SQL Server, the datatype is Date, and in my insert query
cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("#Date", Convert.ToDateTime(row.Cells("Date").Value))
vb format , sql format
Format is irrelevant. Format is only an issue when converting a DateTime to a String for display or when converting text input to a DateTime. You should be storing binary dates in your database and binary dates are just numbers and have no format. You should also be storing binary DateTime values in your grid. How the grid displays them is irrelevant to how they're stored.
Here's what you should be doing. Create a DataTable with a column for DateTime values, not String values. You might do that manually or let a data adapter do it for you when you call Fill. Bind that DataTable to your grid and configure the grid column to display the dates however is appropriate for the application. Save any and all changes made to the grid by calling Update on the same data adapter. You can use a command builder to generate the action commands or you can create them yourself. Either way, you don't populate the parameters yourself but the data adapter draws the values from the DataTable. If you're creating the commands manually, creating a parameter would look something like this:
myDataAdapter.InsertCommand.Parameters.Add("#Date", SqlDbType.Date, 0, "Date")
That tells the data adapter to get the values for the "#Date" parameter from the "Date" column of the DataTable.

SQL Server 2014 SSIS Excel Source Task import to table date and text to numeric conversion issues

Using SQL Server 2014 SSIS to import an vendor supplied Excel file through the Excel Source Data Flow. Two issues I'm having related to data conversion to the SQL table.
In the file is a text column that has prices (numeric values) in it I can't not get it to transform into a numeric field (decimal(8,2)) in SQL. I have used the Data Conversion data flow task converting it to DT_NUMERIC and it fails to process the field. I have also tried to let it go through the Data Conversion task and converted through a Derived Column casting the field to Numeric. Both fail, I'm at a loss as to how to get this into the database in a Decimal/Numeric format.
In the same file are three date fields with dates that look like 07/18/2015 in Excel. I have tried similarly with the Data Conversion and Derived column to get the date into the database as SQL date formats. I have cast the dates at DT_DBDATE and DT_DBDATE and DT_DBTIMESTANP and neither has worked I have also tried taking the month day and year and rearranging them into the SQL date format with Substring/left/right functions to split the string. Also to no avail.
Here is what I tried:
Excel Source ---> Data Conversion ----> Derived Column -----> OLE DB Destination
In the excel source it recognized the date as text, I leave that be in the data conversion to deal with it in the Derived Column where I have tried.
a. (DT_DBDATE)("20" + RIGHT(TRIM(sale_start),2) + "-" + LEFT(TRIM(sale_start),2) + "-" + SUBSTRING(TRIM(sale_start),4,2)) - I have done this with and without the trim with same results. I have also used Right(sale_start,4).
b. (DT_DBDATE) sale_start
The SQL table is data type DATE. I have also changed it to DATETIME and used DT_DBTIMESTAMP in place of DT_DBDATE above.
I can't change the file I'm receiving it needs to process into the database the way it comes from the vendor. Looking at the data in excel there seems to be no reason it wouldn't be ok.
Any direction on bringing this data in would be much appreciated.
2.
I was able to figure this out although I don't completely understand what the connection setting is doing. Similarly with a XML file this connection setting wasn't necessary although some version of a derived column was, I the above I believe in my XML import.
For the EXCEL Solution:
1) In the Excel File connection I added IMEX=1 to the end of the connection under properties. So the connection string looked like this:
Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=C:\SSIS\Test.xls;Extended Properties="EXCEL 8.0;HDR=YES;IMEX=1";
2) Used the following script in the derived column:
ISNULL([Copy of expected_date]) ? NULL(DT_DATE) : (LEN(TRIM([Copy of expected_date])) == 0 ? NULL(DT_DATE) : (DT_DATE)((DT_DBDATE)TRIM([Copy of expected_date])))
Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Importing specific date format to Excel from Microsoft SQL Server

I'm importing dates from a German SQL Server table into a German Excel file via the built-in Excel connection tool.
However the date format is just like in the SQL Server: 2012-08-08 but I want to display: 08.08.2012. When I double-click inside a cell it will recognize the German date formatting but of course I would like to have that format for the entire column without having to manually change it.
I also need to be able to use these dates for calculations.
Do I need to change something in SQL Server or how do I make this work?
Thank you.
The problem is that Excel does not recognise the SQL Server Date type. Cast the date to a Smalldatetime or Datetime, then import and format.
As long as it's recognized ad a date, you can set the formatting of the entire column to a custom one and set the value of the custom format to dd.mm.yyyy (or mm.dd.yyyy, depending on which you want).
Not a programming answer, but it will get you the display you want just by setting the custom format of the whole column.

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