creating a SSIS package with a SQL query to Oracle - sql-server

Question

I have about had it with SQL Server 2012 64 bit!
I am creating a SSIS package with a SQL query to Oracle and trying to put the file into a flat file. I am using the Oracle OLEDB source and a Flat File Destination for the output. Everything works fine locally, but when put on the server and run through SQL Agent I keep getting the Unicode to Non-unicode errors!
The latest drivers are on the server and the 11g client is on my development machine. The types shown in each step show as DT-STR.
I have the exact same source writing to an OLEDB destination just fine. I don't want to have to write these to a table and then pull them back out just to get this to work. Any solutions? And please, no "just add this" responses.
I have tried a data conversion, but get same result. Please supply DETAILED answers as in go here and change this to this. Pictures never hurt. Thanks

Answer 1

Short answer is that you need to convert codepages, not datatypes.
Long answer follows:
Step 0: If you're not already using it, I highly recommend that you switch to using the Attunity Connectors instead of stock Oracle OLEDB connector. You can download it for SQL2012 from Microsoft at: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29283
Step 1: Using the Attunity Oracle Source, you can specify a SQL Command as the data access mode, instead of just pointing at a table.
Step 2: You need to determine the exact code page the Oracle server is using, and the exact code page your SQL server is using. For Oracle servers using the UTF-8 character set, this is most likely AL32UTF8 and for a Windows Server using the default ANSI-1252 char set, the code page is WE8MSWIN1252.
Step 3: Write your plsql query and CONVERT the codepage of all the columns on the Oracle side. Make sure you use double quotes around the Oracle column names. It should look something like this:
SELECT
CONVERT("Data Source Code",'AL32UTF8','WE8MSWIN1252') AS DataSourceCode
,CONVERT("Order#",'AL32UTF8','WE8MSWIN1252') AS OrderNumber
,CONVERT("Invoice#",'AL32UTF8','WE8MSWIN1252') AS InvoiceNumber
,CONVERT("Item#",'AL32UTF8','WE8MSWIN1252') AS ItemNumber
,CONVERT("Order Line Type",'AL32UTF8','WE8MSWIN1252') AS OrderLineType
,CONVERT("Order Status",'AL32UTF8','WE8MSWIN1252') AS OrderStatus
,CONVERT("Order Date",'AL32UTF8','WE8MSWIN1252') AS OrderDate
,CONVERT("Invoice Date",'AL32UTF8','WE8MSWIN1252') AS InvoiceDate
,CONVERT("Ship To Cust#",'AL32UTF8','WE8MSWIN1252') AS ShipToCustNumber
,CONVERT("Billing Account #",'AL32UTF8','WE8MSWIN1252') AS BillingAccountNumber
,CONVERT("Sold Qty",'AL32UTF8','WE8MSWIN1252') AS SoldQty
,CONVERT("Unit Price",'AL32UTF8','WE8MSWIN1252') AS UnitPrice
,CONVERT("Sales Amount",'AL32UTF8','WE8MSWIN1252') AS SalesAmount
,CONVERT("Handling Amount",'AL32UTF8','WE8MSWIN1252') AS HandlingAmount
,CONVERT("Freight Amount",'AL32UTF8','WE8MSWIN1252') AS FreightAmount
FROM MYORACLEDB.DIGITAL_SALES_FEED
WHERE "Invoice Date" >= TO_DATE('2018/08/01', 'yyyy/mm/dd')
Step 4: Use this query text as the SQL command text in the Oracle Source configuration window.
Fun Fact: Oracle will return the column names in ALL CAPS, regardless of your AS ColumnName format.
Step 5 (optional): All columns will be returned as strings. You might want to put a Data Conversion task in your Data Flow, but if you're just dumping your data into a flatfile, you might not care about the data conversion. I have decimal/numeric and dates in my data set, so I do a conversion before inserting into SQL Server.