posted 9/14/2011 by TomLannen - Views: [1016]
With some of the more complex SSIS packages that we develop the number of expressions we use as well as the number of package configurations can become quite large. That can make remembering which component has an expression and what that expression is rather difficult, and the same goes for configurations too. BIxPress has a couple of features that can really help you manage this quite easily.
The Expression Highlighter in BIxPress helps you visually identify which components have expressions and which connections have configurations. Here is how it works. In this package the Data Flow Task currently has no expressions associated with it.
Now I?ll quickly add an expression on the description of the data flow task
Once that is complete and you hit OK the appearance of the Data Flow task has now changed slightly. There is now a little red circle on the Data Flow Task, which is how BIxPress identifies components with expressions associated with them.
The process is pretty much the same for identifying package configurations. Here are the before and after views of a connection manager with and without the package configuration.
As you can see the package configuration shows up as a blue circle instead of a red. Well what happens if you have an expression and a configuration on the same component? Lets add a expression on the same connection manager we just added configurations to.
The connection manager now looks like this.
This will make identifying the components so much easier. What if you don?t want to go through each component one at a time to see which expression each one has. BIxPress has another feature that lets you see all of the expressions in a list, and not surprisingly its called the Expression List. Here is how it works.
From the BIxPress menu select the Expression List and a new window will open up.
As you can see this lists all the components that have expressions. It gives you each object type, object name, the expression property, and the expression. You also have the option to edit the expression right from this window using BIxPress? Expression Editor as well. With BIxPress knowing where your expressions are and what they are doing is much easier.