An Introduction to the SSIS Expression Language

re: An Introduction to the SSIS Expression Language

Tim Mitchell — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:57:17 GMT

Andy, I'm glad to see this topic covered. I catch a lot of questions on forums about the SSIS expression language, and it took me a great deal of time (mostly trial and error) to get beyond the basics. This interesting syntax is still an enigma to many people, so I expect that you'll have a good deal of interest in this series.

Tim

re: An Introduction to the SSIS Expression Language

Log Buffer — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:45:14 GMT

"SSIS isn’t the newest thing around, but as Andy Leonard writes, 'The SSIS Expression Language is one of the steeper slopes on the SSIS learning curve. Many database professionals have never been exposed to the syntax.' If you’re one of those struggling your way up the curve, Andy’s Introduction to the SSIS Expression Language is for you."

<a href="Log'>http://www.pythian.com/blogs/1474/log-buffer-134-a-carnival-of-the-vanities-for-dbas">Log Buffer #134</a>

re: An Introduction to the SSIS Expression Language

Duane Douglas — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 05:43:54 GMT

This is a nice tutorial about SSIS expressions. I moderate the MSDN SSIS forum and I often come across questions about or problems than can be solved with SSIS expressions. Despite its power, expressions are one of the least understood and least used conventions in SSIS. I'm confident that your tutorial on this subject could enlighten many more SSIS developers for years to come.

re: An Introduction to the SSIS Expression Language

Kent Krug — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:39:01 GMT

Andy,

Thanks for sharing this with me.

The problem that I'm still having is that I can change the value of a User Variable with Package Scope and view the change it break mode.

However after I stop debugging the original value persist.

In DTS the value of the Global Variable would be set to value that it was changed to when the Package was run.

Regards,

Kent

re: An Introduction to the SSIS Expression Language

Marty Nickel — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:55:40 GMT

A backslash doesn't escape a double quote in SSIS 2008. That fact is much-complained around the web and it seems that custom import routines are the only solution. To me this seems like quite a shortcoming.

re: An Introduction to the SSIS Expression Language

Sid — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:10:52 GMT

How would you execute the SQL expression built in your package?

re: An Introduction to the SSIS Expression Language

Gary Melhaff — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 00:55:13 GMT

Have you ever had a task not executing even though your precedence constraint is correct?

I had this problem and thought it was because I was comparing string variables to eachother (thanks to attunity oledb doesn't support returning count into anything but string variable). The real cause? I was trying to share an email task between 2 different sequence containers. SSIS apparently has a wonderful feature that if you do this you don't get an error - it just stops running as if it didn't meet the expression condition. Ouch - be nice if this was more widely advertised. btw...am running 2008r2

re: An Introduction to the SSIS Expression Language

andyleonard — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 01:44:03 GMT

Hi Gary,

Are you sure the precedence constraints are configured properly?

Andy

re: An Introduction to the SSIS Expression Language

Jason Yousef — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 14:35:39 GMT

Nice article Andy, not sure what you meant by "If you want to include double-quotes in an expression, the escape sequence is backslash + " - \"." however the double quote is presented by "\"" for clarification.