Professional SQL Server™ 2005 Integration Services

14.1. The Sample Components

Three sample components will be defined in this section to demonstrate the main component types. The transform component will then be expanded in Chapter 15 to include a user interface. All code samples will be available on the Web site for this book, which you can find at www.wrox.com.

14.1.1. Component 1: Source Adapter

The source adapter needs to be able to do quite a few things in order to be able to present the data to the downstream components in the pipeline in a format that the next component understands and is expecting. Here is a list of what the component needs to do:

• Accept a Connection Manager

• Validate the Connection Manager (did it get the right type of Connection Manager?)

• Add output columns to the component for the downstream processes

• Connect to the data source

• Get the data from the data source

• Assign the correct parts of the data to the correct output columns

• Handle any data errors

This component is going to need to do quite a bit of work in order to present its data to the outside world. Stick with it and you'll see how easy this can be. Your aim in the source adapter is to be able to take a file with a custom format, read it, and present it to the downstream components. The file will look like this:

<START>
Name:
Age:
Married:
Salary:
<END>

As you can see, this is a nonstandard format that none of the source adapters out of the box could deal with.

14.1.2. Component 2: Transformation

The transform is where you are going to take data ...