December 14, 2009 at 12:02 pm
I am connected to a development SQL database with DTS packages. One of the packages I need to debug has an Execute Package Task. It is not part of the workflow (arrows), it is along the top part of the designer, along with two other tasks.
Question 1: The tasks along the top of the designer, when do these execute since they are not part of the workflow?
Question 2: When I look at the Execute Package Task properties, the Server dropdown field shows the production server. Should that be there, in the development server? I need to test it so I'm hesitating to run it because I see the production server there.
Help !
December 14, 2009 at 12:37 pm
An Execute Package Task runs a separate package from the one that you are currently in. Since it does not have arrows, it is most likely running in a separate thread simultaneously to another task in the package. If it is pointing to the production server, I would imagine that it is running a task on the production server.
Is there anymore information you can provide? The name of the current package? The full properties of the Execute Package Task?
Joie Andrew
"Since 1982"
December 14, 2009 at 8:31 pm
As it turns out, the Execute Package Task is definitely executing on the production server. But I'm curious about what you said, the package may run simultaneously on a separate thread. How can I verify this?
December 15, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Right, so if you go the properties of the Execute Package Task, it will tell you what instance and the package name of the package the Execute Package Task is running.
As for how to find out if any task is running in parallel or not, that may be a little trickier. If that task is out on its own and does not have any success/failure/completion arrows pointing to it, then it most likely not connected serially to another part of the package. Therefore, it should be able to run on its own depending on a couple of other things. The next thing I would do it to go to the properties of the DTS package itself (with nothing on the package highlighted, on the top menu go to Package > Properties). In the General tab you should see a section called Execution Parameters. There will be a text box labelled "Limit the number of tasks executed in parallel to: " with a number. That will determine how many simultaneous threads will try to execute at once. Now, I believe there is going to be a limit to how many cores you have. So for example if you set that parameter to 16 but only have an 8-core server, it cannot process another 8 threads simultaneously. Windows/SQL may be able to do some kind of time slicing to have 16 threads running at once. I don't know, but it wouldn't be true parallelism anyway.
Joie Andrew
"Since 1982"
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