Thursday, March 27, 2008

SSIS Error executing a package in a 64 bit server

Last week I get into trouble when I was developing a SQL Server Integration Services package to consolidate some information into a Data Warehouse. The package consists of taking some information from text files, performs some transformation with the data via a script task, and updates a SQL table. When I execute the package in the development environment, it does with no problems.
When I deploy the package into the production server, a four 64bit-processors machine, and executes it from a SQL Server Agent job, I got the following error:


- DTS_E_PRODUCTLEVELTOLOW. The product level is insufficient for component ...



Digging and "googling", I discover, despite the confusing (or not?) message from SSIS, that the problem was that the script component of the package was pre-compiled for 32-bits and the server where I was trying to execute the package was a 64-bits one.

There is an option of the "Script Component" that allows to compile in execution time the script, but it's a requirement to pre-compile the script if you want to execute them in a 64-bits server. Amazing!

The workaround consists of executing the package with the dtexec utility instead of as a SSIS ordinary package. In all 64-bits SQL Integration Services servers, the SQL installer installs two versions of the dtexec utility, one for the 64-bits package and another one for 32-bits compatibility executions.

When defining the SQL Server Agent job that executes the process, we should change the job type to "Operating System" and type the command line arguments for the dtexec utility properly to execute the package.

The final command for the job was:


"D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server (x86)\90\DTS\Binn\dtexec.exe" /DTS "\MSDB\TestSSIS32bits" /SERVER "." /CONFIGFILE "C:\Projects\TestSSIS32bits.dtsConfig" /MAXCONCURRENT " -1 " /CHECKPOINTING OFF /REPORTING V


and when I press the "Execute" button the result was SUCCESSFUL:

Monday, March 17, 2008

Microsoft Business Intelligence IT Professional

Last Friday, I past the exam 70-445 “Business Intelligence – Implementation and Maintenance”, becoming a Certified IT Professional developing Business Intelligence solutions.

The exam was finally not as difficult as I thought. I had read that this exam was more difficult to pass than 70-446, but both are similar, and someone who has past one of them, surely will pass the other one with a little effort.

A great help to pass this exam was the Microsoft Training Kit, which includes a set of possible exam questions and allows you to simulate an exam test.

The next step, I hope, will be the “Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 Applications” certification number 70-556.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

First shot

This Wednesday I have finally decided to create my blog, mainly to share my professional experiences in my daily work in "Raona Enginyers", a software engineering company with a high degree of technological knowledge, especially with Microsoft technologies.

I currently work as a technology specialist in Business Intelligence projects, and split myself to be an Account Manager at the same time. This blog is specially intended to people that has a truly passion about this kind of job, like I have.