First SSIS experience so I'm willing to accept I'm doing things completely wrong here:
Using SSIS:
I'm importing from an Excel sheet
exporting to a client's SQL (SQL Server) database
The data has >250 columns
The Client's database rows are all various nvarchar lengths like 3,5,8, etc
I can assume that the excel data will fit into the database properly, so if I truncate I won't lose any data
What I think I have to do here is truncate the data using a "Data Conversion" transform. The problem I have is it's going to take me hours to do this in the "Data Conversion" editor window because I'm dealing with so many columns, when it would only take me a few minutes in a text editor.
Is there any way to bulk update the Data Conversion settings? Am I doing this the wrong way?
The solution I ended up with was:
- change the package to not fail on truncation.
- Once I did this I could get rid of the transform.
- in the database I created a staging table with the excel column names to import to so that I didn't have to manually match everything up in SSIS
Related
I'm trying to import data into SQL Server using SQL Server Management Studio and I keep getting the "output column... failed because truncation occurred" error. This is because I'm letting the Studio autodetect the field length which it isn't very good at.
I know I can go back and extend the column length but I'm thinking there must be a better way to get it right first time without having to manaully work out how long each column is.
I know that this must be a common issue but my Google searches aren't coming up with anything as I'm more looking for a technique rather than a specific issue.
One approach you may take, assuming the import is not something which would take hours to complete, is to just set every text column to VARCHAR(MAX), and then complete the CSV import. Once you have the actual table in SQL Server, you can inspect each column using LEN to see how wide it is. Based on that, you can either alter columns, or you could just take notes, drop the table, and reimport using appropriate widths.
You should look into leveraging SSIS for this task. There is somewhat of a fixed cost in terms of spending time setting up the process for importing the csv file and creating a physical table in the database. Ultimately, though, you will be able to set the data types for each column/field in your file. Further, SSIS will enable you to transform or reformat the data to say the least.
I would suggest downloading Visual Studio and SQL Server Data Tools. The latter contains the necessary tools, including SSIS, SSRS, and SSAS, for which you would need to complete this task.
The main point is being able to automate this task, especially if it's an ongoing project of uploading csv files into the database.
Is it even possible to import .csv flat file data into a SQL Server 2014 table using only the SSMS or SSIS Import/Export Wizards, if the table contains a varbinary(max) column?
I have searched hours and hours, and tried numerous configurations and different data types (e.g. DT_IMAGE) in both the SSMS and SSIS Import/Export Wizards to perform a simple, quick-n-dirty import of .csv file data into a four column table containing a varbinary(max) column in SQL Server.
I realize there are various other means to accomplish this by writing Trans SQL, using bulk-copy, adding column-import tasks, etc., but I find it hard to believe that I can't use the simple point-n-click configuration of the Import/Export Wizard, simply because the data happens to contain a varbinary(max) field, so I assume I must be doing something wrong.
Below are screen shots from the SSMS Import/Export Wizard...I get the same error in both SSMS and SSIS:
You can use DT_TEXT An ANSI/MBCS character string with a maximum length of 2^31-1 (2,147,483,647) characters.
Integration Service Data types.
It Will be varbinary(max) in database.
I have used the sample data provide by you and imported it in the database.
We are trying to devise an optimal method for importing very large Excel files into SQL database. Using SSIS is somewhat troublesome because it scans top X records to determine the format of the file, but rows further down may be different, so it takes a lot of trial and error, with us having to bring the unusual columns to the top so SSIS can "learn".
When we get new file formats to import, they conform to specification in terms of row formatting etc - so we can say we know the schema in advance. The SQL destination tables have the same schema, with couple of extra columns such as date inserted and original filename.
Is there an easier way to create format definitions for new files we are going to insert? We don't have to use SSIS, we are open to any other tool, with a view for as much automation as possible. There's a question of testing the sanity of data we will import, we were planning on doing basic queries against staging datasets such as "less than 1% of records can miss postal code" etc.
Many thanks
Maybe you can import data as text and after that you can convert that using Derived Column transformation. You can read data from Excel as Text using IMEX option in Connection String. More information about this parameter you can find here.
Building a package to pull data from SQL Server view and load it into an excel file. Getting a generic error (Multiple-step OLE DB operation generated errors... No work was done. Apparently this is usually from data type mis-matches. I am looking over the mapping in the Data Conversion task, but I don't see anything wrong. When I tried creating this in the Data Export wizard in SQL Server, I was getting truncation errors.
I have heard that I can use the "Derived Columns' task to fix the conversion failures, but I need to identify which columns are having trouble. How do I pinpoint the exact problem columns?
EDIT - Using BIDS 2008, exporting to an excel destination. I first tried with the import/export wizard in SSMS but kept failing, so I am now trying to do it in SSIS/BIDS.
I am currently getting the 0x80040E37 when I try to open the mapping tab in the Destination task. Apparently the fixes are to set to 32 bit or fix the mappings. I am running in 32 bit and I can't fix the mappings because the tab wont open because of this error.
The problem was Excel 2007 has a 255 length limit on fields. Two choices are to either switch your destination file type to 97-2003, or add a derived column task to truncate (substring) the field, which looses data. There is probably another option having to do with error handling and dumping the row off to a flat file or something.
I am new to SSIS. I am using SSIS 2012 to transfer data from Excel(COZYROC Excel Source Plus component) to SQL server database(OLE DB Destination). My requirement is whenever columns in the excel are not matched with mapped columns or any columns are missing, I should log the error message in the database.
Please help to resolve this problem.
I don't believe that is possible.
SSIS (and SSRS and other applications) require a 'contract' between source and destination such that any changes to the source will throw a mapping error and force the developer to re-map the data flow.
SSIS is not capable of a scenario such as 'if the source columns change, pump the rest and log the changes to another path'.
This is also an example of why Excel makes a terrible data source for a normalized database/ETL project, because users can easily change the Excel doc in such a way that would break data mapping.
Good luck.