Chapter 7: Debugging Packages

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Overview

After completing this chapter, you will be able to:

• Create breakpoints on packages, containers, and tasks in Control Flow and suspend execution at different kinds of events.

• Inspect the current state of execution, using debug windows such as Locals, Autos, and Watch.

• Understand progress messages logged on the Progress and Execution results tabs.

• Partially execute packages by disabling tasks and containers in Control Flow.

• Set data viewers in Data Flow tasks to preview data between transformation components.

• Create breakpoints in a Script task and inspect code line by line, using VSA debugging capabilities.

In the past few chapters, you learned how to create a package by using several kinds of tasks and Data Flow components. Perhaps you have already built a complicated package on your own.

In general, the more complicated your program is, the more chance you have of implanting defects in the program. When you execute a package in Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS), you might have to debug the package because it fails, or the result is not what you intend. BIDS, SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) Designer, and Microsoft Visual Studio for Applications (VSA) provide powerful features and tools to diagnose the problem precisely and quickly. The Control Flow, Data Flow, and Script features require different tools for debugging due to the difference of architectures. In this chapter, you will learn what options you have to debug a package, and then you will learn how to use them through exercises.