SSIS: Make Excel Visible In Script Task During SQL Server Agent Job Run

Question

I built a package in SSIS that uses a script task to open an Excel file, format, and refresh some data in Excel. I would like to have Excel visible when the script task is running to see if Excel gets hung up which occurs all the time. Is this possible? I am converting a process that is calling Excel via a shell script to using SSIS to call Excel instead. I guess a second question is, is that a bad idea?

Answer 1

Why this is a bad idea

Generally speaking, administrators are tasked with maximizing the amount of "uptime" a server or service on the server has. The more software that gets installed on the machine, the greater the odds of service interruptions and outages due to patching. To be able to manipulate Excel in the mechanism you described, you're going to force the installation of MS Office on that machine. That will cost you a software license and the amount of patching required is going to blow holes in whatever SLAs those admins might be required to adhere to.

Memory leaks. Along with the whole patching bit, in the past at least, there were issues with programmatically manipulating Excel and it basically boiled down to it was easy to end up with memory leaks (I gotta make you understand. Allocated memory but never given it up, never let the allocated memory go down). Over time, the compounded effect is that running this package will result in less and less system memory available and the only way to reclaim it is through a reboot, which gets back to SLAs.

The reason you want to see what Excel is doing is so that you can monitor execution because it "gets hung up which occurs all the time". That doesn't sound like a stable process. Again, no admin is going to want an unstable process running on the servers. Something is not right in the cycle of events. Whether it's your code that opens Excel, the macros it runs, etc, something in there is awry and that's why you need to inspect the process. This is akin to putting a bandaid on a shotgun wound. Stop shooting yourself and you won't require bandages.

The task that you're attempting to perform is "open an Excel file, format, and refresh some data in Excel" SSIS can natively push data into Excel. If you preformat the file, develop your SSIS to write to the formatted file and just copy it off, that should work. It's not graceful but it works. There are better methods of providing formatted data but without knowing your infrastructure, I don't know if SSRS, SharePoint, Excel Services, Power Pivot, etc are viable options.

Why you won't be able to see Excel

Generally speaking, the account that runs SQL Agent is probably going to be fairly powerful. To prevent things like a shatter attack, from Windows 2008+ services are restricted in what they can do. For the service account to be able to interact with the desktop, you have to move it into the user tier of apps which might not be a good thing if you, or your DBA/admins, are risk adverse.

For more information, please to enjoy the following links

• InteractWithDesktop
• http://lostechies.com/keithdahlby/2011/08/13/allowing-a-windows-service-to-interact-with-desktop-without-localsystem/
• https://serverfault.com/questions/576144/allow-service-to-interact-with-desktop
• https://superuser.com/questions/415204/how-do-i-allow-interactive-services-in-windows-7

That said, if all of the stars are aligned and you accept the risk, of Allow Service to Interact with the Desktop, the answer is exactly as Sam indicated. In your unshown code, you need to set the Visible property to true.

As you go off and allow interactivity with the desktop and someone leaves some "testing" code in the package that gets deployed to production with MessageBox.Show("Click OK to continue"); be aware that if nobody notices this dialog box sitting there, you'll have a job waiting to complete for a very long time.

Answer 2

Regarding your first question, I understand that you want to debug your script task. You can make Excel visible by adding the following line of code in your script task (assuming C# is the coding language):

    // Create your Excel app
    var excelApp = new Excel.Application();

    // Make the Excel window visible to spot any issues
    excelApp.Visible = true;

Don't forget to remove/comment that line after debugging.

Regarding your second question, I don't that this is a bad idea if you properly handle how Excel is opened and closed, in order to avoid memory issues.