How to manage SSIS script component output columns and its properties programmatically

Question

I am developing a source in SSIS VS 2017 which calls REST API using script Component and serialises JSON and provides records which I am storing in SQL Table. While designing I need add output columns which are 200+ manually and set properties like data type and length manually for each and every column which is very tedious. Can any please suggest how can I add all those columns using a program and set properties using code or may be I just create one excel and just import it and it’s done in one second. Please help brainstorm and suggest ideas VSTA is one option but I don’t know how to do it? Where to start from!! Thank you, Kunal

Answer 1

I totally agree with @Arthur comment, you should build the whole package programmatically. You have two approaches to create packages programatically:

(1) Build SSIS using C#

If you are familiar with C# you have two choices:

(a) Using SQL Server Client SDK assemblies

This is the official traditional way to create ssis packages programmatically, there are many link on the internet that you can refer to such as:

• Creating a Package Programmatically
• Samples for creating SSIS packages programmatically
• Creating and Executing an SSIS Package Programmatically
• Building Packages Programmatically

(b) Using EzApi – Alternative package creation API

EzAPI is a .NET library written in C# by Evgeny Koblov one of the testers on the SSIS team to abstracts away a lot of the cumbersome low-level coding needed to create SSIS packages XML directly in a programming language

• GitHub - EzApi2016
• NuGet Gallery - EzApi

There are many link on the internet that you can refer to such as:

• EzAPI – Alternative package creation API
• EzAPI Overview
• EzApi a C# library for creating SSIS packages programatically
• Getting Started with EzAPI

(2) Build SSIS using BIML

If you are familiar with XML, then you should use BIML (Business Intelligence Markup Language) which is a markup language developed by Varigence and can be integrated within Visual Studio to create packages without the need of coding experience.

• Biml Website

There are many links that you can refer to learn BIML:

• One Learning Path for Biml
• Introduction to Business Intelligence Markup Language (BIML) for SSIS

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Update 1 - C# approach

Recently i started a new project on Git-Hub, which is a class library developed using C#. You can use it to import tabular data from excel, word , powerpoint, text, csv, html, json and xml into SQL server table with a different schema definition using schema mapping approach. check it out at:

• SchemaMapper: C# Schema mapping class library

You can follow this Wiki page for a step-by-step guide:

• Import data from multiple files into one SQL table step by step guide

You can use this library to read from json and import into SQL (without changing the schema) with a few lines of code.