sql_er (2/15/2013)

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Hi,

We have the following scenario: We receive CSV files every month for which SSIS packages were built to process the data. The following problems occur from time to time:

1. The structure of the CSV file changed (e.g. column added or removed)
2. There were no footers in the data, but now footers started to appear
3. Date format changed (e.g. used to be mm/dd/yyyy, but became mm.dd.yyyy)
4. Number format changed (e.g. from 2000 to 2,000)

Currently we have person who manually opens each file, and using our "validation document" validates to ensure none of these or similar problems occur. We would like to move away from this manual process if possible and are looking for suggestions.

I understand that items 3. and 4. could be caught by loading data into a staging table with VARCHAR data types, and performing validation before moving it any further.

Item 2 is a bit questionable (meaning depending on the footer size SSIS load could fail or not).

Item 1, however, is a sure fail of the SSIS package that directly loads the data into a table.

Thus I feel the two possible options are:

1. Create a custom script that will run through the file, row by row, apply all the necessary validations and report an error or continue if all checks out

2. Use some 3rd party tool to validate the files (semi-manually) before kicking off the SSIS processing.

My questions are:

1. If you've had encountered a similar problem, how did you resolve it? If you did build a custom script, could you share, or do you know of some Framework that was built that could be used somewhat as plug and play?

2. Does anyone know of good 3rd party tool(s) to assist in this process?

Thanks in advance!