Debugging: How do I do it ??? !!!

  • I am extremely frustrated trying to debug my first real SSIS package. Can someone PLEASE help me out and tell me just how I am supposed to Debug a Package?

    Things I already know or did:

    1) I am familiar with Visual Studio 2005 and have done plenty of .Net development and debugging.

    2) I already figured out how to set breakpoints in script and on the components events. I do not need help with this.

    3) I have already read everything that I could find in BOL. All I could find was how to set breakpoints. BFD, I already figured that out.

    What I need to know is what can I actually DO and HOW TO DO IT, after a breakpoint fires. My VS experience is absolutely no help, except inside a script component.

    My current problem is that my scripts do not seem to be getting or setting the variables properly, or else later components are not picking them up properly. However, the Variables display does not seem to register any changes while in "run mode", and it does not show me the system variables either! I have tried the immediate window, but I trider the following and got this response:

    ?@{User::Err_Message}

    Unable to evaluate the expression. Not implemented

    WTF?!?!!

    There are "Watch" windows, but no apparent way to set them. Is there really no way to debug SSIS in BIDS except to sit there and watch what breakpoints fire?

    Somebody please, Please help me. I have already lost a day and a half on this...

  • Anybody?

  • Sometimes for debugging variables I just throw in a script task and do:

    MsgBox(Dts.Variables ("yourvariablenamegoeshere").Value.ToString)

  • Angry Boy,

    I sense some frustration, and I can definitely understand that. SSIS can be a bit annoying as you get used to it.

    Does this help?

    http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Video/64762/

  • Thanks Steve, that did the trick: The "Locals" window is what I was looking for!

  • glad I could help. I need to get a better article written on this as I know it's an annoying thing to figure out.

  • Thanks Bryan, this tip help me a lot !!!

  • Steve Jones - Editor (3/4/2009)


    Angry Boy,

    I sense some frustration, and I can definitely understand that. SSIS can be a bit annoying as you get used to it.

    Does this help?

    http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Video/64762/

    Oh thank goodness! I was looking for this too.... thanks!

    Whodathunk that doing something so simple as setting and inspecting a variable could be so tricky! My first week with SSIS and so far I am not very impressed!

  • Thank you both for bringing up the issue and providing the info!! This was driving me nuts.

  • [font="Comic Sans MS"]Thanks Steve - this video helped me a lot.[/font]

    [font="Comic Sans MS"]--
    Sabya[/font]

  • For what its worth...

    Those of you who are new to SSIS...

    It will get better! You'll discover the weird little things about

    SSIS and yes, you will pull out your hair. But in time you

    will love it becasue of what it can do for you.

    When I first began using it all I could think was "why can't I just

    write some VB.NET code to do all this?".....eventually I came

    to see that SSIS really does a very good job at what it is

    designed for.

    Even so, 3 years later I still get mad...especially when trying to do

    something simple. My contractor put it best: SSIS is easy to use for

    difficult operations, and very difficult to use for easy operations.

    🙂

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