1. Click Start
2. Right-click Computer and select Properties
3. Click Advanced System Settings
4. Under the Advanced Tab, click Environment Variables
5. Click New…
6. Enter a Variable Name and Variable Value
7. Click OK, and you’re done!

Fig 1. The environment variable editor

Updating Environment Variable Values

To update the environment variable that you have just created, you can redo the steps above and choose Edit… instead of New.. in step 5. Or, You can do the following:

1. Bring up a Command window (Start>Run>”cmd”)
2. Type SET, and press Enter
3. This will give you a list of all the Environment Variables available to you.
4. Find the one you want to update, type SET YourEnvironmentVariableName=YourVariableValue
5. Type SET, and press Enter to check the new value
6. Done.

Note – you’ll need to have administrator privileges to perform the above actions.

The Data Warehousing and BI Virtual Chapter was started up Amy Lewis (@amy_lewisAZ), Tim Mitchell (Blog | @tim_mitchell) & Adam Jorgensen (Blog | @adam_jorgensen). If you are not already signed up for PASS, and in particular this VC, then shame on you. You should be. There are a ton of great resources and they are there for YOUR benefit!

The BI Virtual Chapter can be found here: http://bi.sqlpass.org/. Bookmark it now!! There is also a Twitter account for the BI VC (@PASSBIVC)

There are loads of great events coming up too. Here is a summary of what is on offer:

All events start at 12pm EST

Each of these are described in more detail on the BI Virtual Chapter website

I am thoroughly looking to each of these and want to express my thanks to the organisers for pulling this Virtual Chapter together.

SSIS Templates go here:

%Program Files%Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\ProjectItems\DataTransformationProject\DataTransformationItems\

SSRS Templates go here:

%Program Files%Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\ProjectItems\ReportProject\

With BIDS (that would be Business Intelligence Development Studio…) open and an SSIS project loaded, bring up the toolbox and right-click it. You will see the following menu:

Select the Choose Items… option. Now, click on the SSIS Control Flow Items tab and deselect all the components that you are not using.

Repeat the above step for the SSIS Data Flow Items and Maintenance Tasks tabs.

Click OK and you are all done. The components listed should now reflect just those that you will actually use and should mean less vertical scrolling.

But wait, there’s another option…

If you would prefer to have all your components immediately available, but still want to organise the toolbox, then follow these easy steps:

Right-click the toolbox and choose Add Tab. Give the Tab a nice descriptive name.

Now click on and drag into that group/tab all the components that you are not using regularly, or indeed the ones you are (if that’s what you would prefer).

All that’s left is to apply a Sort Items Alphabetically and collapse the groups you are not concerned with and you have a nice tidy toolbox.

Happy days!

OLE DB Source Adapter

The OLE DB source connection has several Access Modes:

• Openrowset
• Openrowset From Variable
• SQL Command
• SQL Command From Variable

For now, I am going to focus on the SQL Command options. Using the SQL Command Access Mode requires you to set the SqlCommand property (typing in your SQL query directly), effectively ‘hard coding’ the sql statement into the package. Using the SQL Command From Variable option allows you to set the SqlCommand property using a variable and subsequently by using an expression.

Data Reader Source

The Data Reader Source connection has only one Access Mode, and that is SQL Command. Don’t ask me why. At this level you can only set the SqlCommand property by typing in your query, or indeed, copy & paste.

Using an Expression to set the SqlCommand Property

“So then,” you ask, “how might I set the SqlCommand property for each of these Data Sources when it seems that I can’t?”. Here’s how. Let’s first concentrate on the OLE DB Source:

1. Create a new Variable of type string and set your SQL statement
2. Open up the OLE DB Source and select the ‘SQL Command from Variable’ option
3. Now, select the the variable created in step 1 as the variable that contains the SQL statement

At this point your OLE DB source is defined by the query that you have set in the Variable. We now need to create the expression that will define the query at runtime. We do this by navigating to the variable’s properties, setting the EvaluateAsExpression property to True and then configuring the expression in the Expression property.

Moving on to the Data Reader Source. With this adapter we only have the option of setting the SqlCommand directly. Or so I thought until recently. If you switch to the Control Flow design surface and select the Data Flow task that contains the Data Reader Source adapter, you will be able to set the SqlCommand using an expression.

1. Select the Data Flow task to bring up its properties
2. Click the ellipsis (…) to bring up the Expression Editor
3. Select the [DataReader Source].[SqlCommand] Property
4. Set your expression.

Using variables & expressions to set your queries enables you to centralise your queries, use configuration files to set database connections and capture the queries you are running in logging operations.  

I have been setting up a number of ODBC connections in the last few days, that are to be used in an SSIS package. The connections enable me to access a number of IBM Informix Servers in various locations (DR & TEST sites) and extract specific data for reporting. However, I was having a considerable amount of aggravation with a particular connection that kept giving the following Error:

I found out that (unsurprisingly) there is a Database Locale property – located in the Environment tab of the Create New Data source dialog box. This needed to be set to en_US.819.

This fixed my issue and I can now connect easily to each of the Informix instances. Why it was different for this particular connection I have no idea, but for now, this question will have to wait. I’ll follow this up in due course.