I think you've answered your own question:

"The requirement is that users will be able to place a booking via a web application from any PC/device running any OS. This is...

You can also create a unique filtered index, filtering out NULLS.

This effectively ignores NULLS but makes sure that NON NULL values are unique.

See here

http://www.sqlmag.com/blog/sql-server-questions-answered-28/development/whatrsquos-good-unique-filtered-index-141334

But of course it depends...

Thanks for posting your solution. You have contributed to the data quality of the internet!

Are you saying it works when running on your dev server against the dev oracle database, but fails when running on the dev server against your prod oracle database? Or...

You can...

Also what name is given to the source and destination data types in Informix and SQL Server in SSIS?

For example: WSTR, STR... something like that?

Do you know for sure whether...

As you can guess I do not have a simple solution for you but I can suggest tests that might isolate the problem. If I'm wasting your time let me...

So you have tried transferring directly from Informix to a text file vai SSIS, and, for example if you've exported to CSV, you open the text file and just find...

Just throwing out some suggestions:

1. In the target are the values NULL or do they contain spaces?

2. What if you ETL into a text file, not a database table -...

My Advice: Every day trawl this forum, pick a question, research it, and maybe even answer it.

You'll learn a lot from answering questions on forums, or at least researching them...

Are are these static or data based headers and footers?

To glue three files together, you just issue this command line:

COPY Header.TXT + YourOutputFile.TXT + Footer.TXT NewOutputFile.TXT

and it will create a...

At least start the troubleshooting process - isolate the column with the issue. Run your select using a single column until you find the onw with the issue.

Certainly I know...

Of course I agree. Or perhaps there is some disagreeemnt on sematics or some hair splitting going on.

I remain open minded on the tools usage here are some thoughts:

1. Scope creep

You build an interactive package and before you know it, people want it extended to have drop...

I think Pablo means use OPENQUERY on just the Oracle table, not all tables - it definitely won't work on all tables as it can't see the SQL tables when...