How can you change the shape of a Precedence Constraint flow?

  • I have an SSIS package with quite a lot of data flows and precedence constraints coming out of them.

    Is there a way I can alter the shape of these precedence constraints as I would like to tidy up the layout of the package.

    Similar to Visio, where you can change the format or direction of a connector

  • Unfortunately, you have little control over how those precedence constraints are displayed. You can move around the tasks and containers, but can't directly manipulate how precedence constraints are laid out.

    As a side note, you can use the auto layout functionality (Format menu -> Auto Layout -> Diagram) to automatically format the layout, which does a decent job of rendering the flow in a readable manner.

  • When you hover over the lines, you get the resize cursor, so you can move them around a little bit, yes.

    Thom~

    Excuse my typos and sometimes awful grammar. My fingers work faster than my brain does.
    Larnu.uk

  • I assume you're just referring to visual appearance of the package. There is a Format menu option, to help you with some of that.

    If you select a group of components you can then do things like Align Lefts, Make same size, Increase spacing, ect....

    Just make sure you've saved your package if you want to try any of the auto format option as these are really quite destructive to a nice layout. But heck give it a try maybe you'll like it. My favorite that it likes to do is take the left input for Merge Join and put it on the right hand side.

  • Thom, it does let you move them around, but it doesn't persist that change. If you modify the task on either end of the constraint in any way (move, rename, resize), it'll reset to the default position. That reset makes it mostly unusable as a formatting function, since any trivial change will undo all of that reformatting.

  • Tim Mitchell wrote:

    Thom, it does let you move them around, but it doesn't persist that change. If you modify the task on either end of the constraint in any way (move, rename, resize), it'll reset to the default position. That reset makes it mostly unusable as a formatting function, since any trivial change will undo all of that reformatting.

    Yes, I was assuming you would be doing the formatting as the last step (which is normally where you would do it). If you keep needing to change your precedences, seems like there's a underlying logic issue there.

    Thom~

    Excuse my typos and sometimes awful grammar. My fingers work faster than my brain does.
    Larnu.uk

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