I am migrating DTS packages to SSIS. I am building a data flow task to load a
dimension table. I'm using the slowly changing dimension component to
add/update records. Some of my source data is unknown until further business
analysis is complete. My source queries are using NULL as the value for these
unknown source column values. The queries use NULL for target columns of
various data types. I intially ran into problems when the target column data
types were character types. I used the data conversion component to set the
source column data types to string types. That worked. Now I'm having
problems when the target column is a datetime data type. I tried using the
data conversion component to set the source data to a date data type, but am
receiving the following error message:

TITLE: Microsoft Visual Studio
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Error at Data Flow Task 2 [DTS.Pipeline]: The component view is unavailable.
Make sure the component view has been created.

Error at Data Flow Task 2 [Slowly Changing Dimension [106]]: The input
column "input column "Source_System_Entry_Date" (1315)" cannot be mapped to
external column "external metadata column "Source_System_Entry_Date" (1276)"
because they have different data types. The Slowly Changing Dimension
transform does not allow mapping between column of different types except for
DT_STR and DT_WSTR.



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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Errors were encountered while generating the wizard results:
Error at Data Flow Task 2 [DTS.Pipeline]: The component view is unavailable.
Make sure the component view has been created.

Error at Data Flow Task 2 [Slowly Changing Dimension [106]]: The input
column "input column "Source_System_Entry_Date" (1315)" cannot be mapped to
external column "external metadata column "Source_System_Entry_Date" (1276)"
because they have different data types. The Slowly Changing Dimension
transform does not allow mapping between column of different types except for
DT_STR and DT_WSTR.



For help, click:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?ProdN...s&LinkId=20476

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BUTTONS:

OK
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I found a solution. I don't completely understand it, but it worked.
Apparently, date data types have changed from SQL Server 2000 to 2005. Now
there's a DATE, DBDATE and DBTIME, and TIMESTAMP. I've always avoided
TIMESTAMP in earlier versions of SQL Server because its values are not
readable and the use of this data type for me was replaced by other data
types. I was mapping my date source columns to the DBDATE 2005 data type. I
changed that to the TIMESTAMP data type and it worked. I briefly read about
the TIMESTAMP data type and it seems that in 2005 it is readable data instead
of garbage when queried. I'll know more after I execute the transformations,
but this issue is resolved for now.

"Phillip" wrote: