I had another chance last week to answer an email follow up question from the session Brian and I gave at PASS. This made for a great blog opportunity so I thought I would write about using Fast Parse in SSIS. Hopefully I can explain it even more basic then Microsoft does on MSDN.
Using fast parse can drastically improve performance of your package when using a flat files source or data conversion transform by basically not validating the columns that you specify. Keep in mind that these columns must be a date, time, or integer data types to enable fast parse.
To enable fast parse on either a flat file source or a data conversion transformation use the following steps that can also be found on the MSDN link provided. The provided image highlights these steps. Keep in mind that this must be set for each individual column and can only be used on the column types stated previously.
Right-click the Flat File source or Data Conversion transformation, and then click Show Advanced Editor.
In the Advanced Editor dialog box, click the Input and Output Properties tab.
In the Inputs and Outputs pane, click the column for which you want to enable fast parse.
In the Properties window, expand the Custom Properties node, and then set the FastParse property to True.
Click OK.
