Chapter 4

Containers

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

  • Learning when to use containers
  • Working with Sequence Containers
  • Working with the For Loop Container
  • Using a Foreach Loop Container to iterate through a list

In the last chapter, you read about tasks and how they interact in the Control Flow. Now we’re going to cover one of the special types of items in the Control Flow: containers. Containers are objects that help SSIS provide structure to one or more tasks. They can help you loop through a set of tasks until a criterion has been met or group a set of tasks logically. Containers can also be nested, containing other containers. They are set in the Control Flow tab in the Package Designer. There are three types of containers in the Control Flow tab: Sequence, For Loop, and Foreach Loop Containers.

TASK HOST CONTAINERS

The Task Host Container is the default container under which single tasks fall and is used only behind the scenes for SSIS. You won’t notice this type of container. You’ll notice that this type of container is not in the Toolbox in Visual Studio and is implicitly assigned to each task. In fact, even if you don’t specify a container for a task, it will be placed in a Task Host Container. The SSIS architecture extends variables and event handlers to the task through the Task Host Container.

SEQUENCE CONTAINERS

Sequence Containers handle the flow of a subset of a package and can help you divide a package into smaller, more manageable pieces. Some nice applications that you ...

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