Nuances of using Excel data sources with SSIS

Your Development Machine Setup

* Needs Jet Drivers, available along with the default Office install so if you have Excel working fine locally, this is enough.

* Installing the "Office Data Connectivity Components" (download file name AccessDatabaseEngine.exe) as well as having Office installed corrupts the Jet Driver stack so that SSIS in VS 2008 cannot create the object to read the XLS file. You will see the title error "Unspecified Error" and "80004005" code.

Resolution:

1. Uninstall the Jet Engine pack on your development XP machine if you have Office. It will be listed as something like "Microsoft Access Database Engine (2010)".

2. Run Office 200x setup with the Repair option and reboot.

3. Try configuring the task in SSIS and it should be able to read the Sheet names again and columns.

Live Server (32-bit and 64-bit)

Deploying your SSIS package to a server without Office 200x means it will not have the Jet Engine drivers to read XLS, XLSX files. You must install the 32-bit Office Data Connectivity Components - Jet Drivers mentioned above found here (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7554f536-8c28-4598-9b72-ef94e038c891&displaylang=en).

There are no 64-bit drivers; therefore regardless of 32 or 64-bit live environments, this step is the same.

You should then run the SSIS package as a CmdExec job type using BAT file with something like:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\Binn\DTEXEC.exe" /FILE "D:\SSISDeployment\PbR_ETL\PbR_Parent.dtsx" /CHECKPOINTING OFF /REPORTING EW /SET \Package.Variables[User::AdHocRulesetId].Properties[Value];2

Path C:\Program Files (x86)\ locates the 32-bit mode for SSIS. If you do not do this, the 64-bit environment cannot invoke the Jet Driver (32bit) to read XLSX files.

Network file locations

If your Excel file is on a network drive, you must ensure the user that the job runs under can access this. The best way is to change the SQL Server and SQL Server Agent service accounts to a domain account eg. XCLPCT\SQL2008Service. The internet is full of information about this topic but we found it best to use a Domain Account for tons of other benefits too.

Grant NTFS permissions to this new domain user to the folder(s). Note: It is necessary to change the SQL Server service account itself because SQL Agent uses this account as a proxy to request Active Directory security information - trust me, I had a nightmare just focussing on SQL Agent solely. If you use a Local User for the SQL Server but it is not authorised by AD, you will never get permission to fully run the job properly.

Furthermore, the Excel Data Source SSIS task will need a full UNC path as it will execute under your new SQL Server Agent service account and might not have the necessary network drive letter mappings. Specify in your configuration file the full UNC path like

\\mynetworkserver\ShareName\MyNetworkFolder\Data.xls

Final Notes

My config that finally worked:

Local PC: XP, VS 2008, Office 2007 Enterprise only

Server: Win2008, SSIS DTExec 32-bit version by Batch File call, Office 2007 Data Connectivity Components pack, Domain Accounts set for Startup of SQL Server services and NTFS permissions granted.