SQL BI – The Data Queen

Batch GeoCoding in SSIS

I’ve had to do some geocoding of addresses. It used to be free to process a lot of addresses, but now that this is a more mainstream activity you generally have to purchase an Enterprise License. This can cost upwards of $10,000. If you have a very small number of addresses you can use a free service like Bing Maps, which currently allows you to process 50 records at a time, and run 5 jobs per 24 hours. This means a maximum of 250 per day. If you want to check out how this works, here’s how.

Install the free Codeplex SSIS Batch Geocoder into your Visual Studio environment

http://ssisbatchgeocoder.codeplex.com/releases/view/66866

Get a Bing Maps Key

You need to have or set up a Microsoft account to get a key. Follow the instructions to get a Basic Key. If you have a large number of addresses you will want to look into purchasing an Enterprise License.

http://www.microsoft.com/maps/

Set up an SSIS project

Create a Visual Studio SSIS project. If you can’t see the toolbox, in the Visual Studio Menu choose View – Other Windows – SSIS Toolbox. If you can’t see the Variables window, in the Visual Studio Menu choose View – Other Windows – Variables.

Add these two string variables to your project: BingMapsKey and JobDescription. Set the value of the BingMapsKey variable to the key you obtain from Bing Maps. Set the JobDescription variable to “Geolookup from address”

Add a Data Flow Task. Open up the Data Flow Task. On the Data Flow Task add these four items:

Configure the OLE DB Source to connect to the table that contains the addresses.

Configure the Derived Columns like this:

Configure the SSIS Batch Geocoder like this, using the two variables as the Bing Maps Key and the Job Description, and mapping any other relevant columns from your data.

Configure the OLE DB Destination to wherever you want your output to reside. Choose whichever output fields meet your needs. The latitude and longitude output can be stored in a field of SQL data type “Geography”.

In preparing this post I found these articles helpful.

http://ssisbatchgeocoder.codeplex.com/documentation

http://blog.programmableweb.com/2012/06/21/7-free-geocoding-apis-google-bing-yahoo-and-mapquest/

How to use a Delimited String in a Multi-valued Parameter

I’ve seen this issue a lot lately. There is a need to feed a comma delimited string of values into a multi-value parameter in an SSRS report. There is a simple way to do this.

SET UP YOUR MAIN REPORT QUERY

Your main report query should be set up to expect a string of values in the parameter. For example:

SELECT Product_ID
      ,Item_No
      ,Item_Description
  FROM DIM_Product
  WHERE Item_No IN (@ITEM)

SET UP THE PARAMETER

The parameter should be set up as text, but NOT allow multiple values.

You can set this up as you wish to meet your purpose, but for demonstration I will set up two groups of comma delimited strings as available values.

I have set up a second data set to feed these default values to the parameter.

SELECT '11000B,2200,17000' AS ITEMNMBR

SET UP THE PARAMETER ON THE MAIN REPORT DATASET

Now comes the magic. On the Dataset Properties for your main report dataset, on the Parameters tab, edit the expression for the Parameter Value.

Write this in the parameter expression: =split(Parameters!Item.Value,",")

This will take the comma delimited string as input, split it into individual values and it will get used in the IN clause of the main query that we set up at the beginning of this post.

WHERE Item_No IN (@ITEM)

Viola, the report filters on a string of values.

Loop through dynamic SQL statements in SSIS

This is a situation where the data from a number of tables with the same structure needs to be imported into a single table. Rather than hard coding multiple data flows from source to destination, you can loop through each SQL statement using a single data flow by building a dynamic SQL statement. This simple package loops through each table name to accomplish just that. It also has a secondary loop to pivot some hard coded week numbers in the field names.

The data source is a series of tables with the same structure. Each one holds a different set of planning data. The fields have the fiscal month hard coded into the name, rather than have Week Number as an attribute.

The destination not only needs to map multiple tables to a single table, but it also needs to pivot the fiscal month weeks.

LOOP THROUGH TABLES

To accomplish this I hard coded the table names into the For Each loop, but an object variable could just as easily done this.

LOOP THROUGH FIELD NAMES (WeekNo)

VB SCRIPT TASK TO WRITE THE DYNAMIC SQL STATEMENT

In the script portion, write a simple script which uses the variables and embeds them in the SQL statement you are writing. This outputs to your SQLStatement variable to be used in the data flow.

    Public Sub Main()
        '

        Dim WeekNo As Integer
        Dim TableName As String
        Dim SQLStmt As Object

        WeekNo = Dts.Variables("WeekNo").Value
        TableName = Dts.Variables("TableName").Value
        SQLStmt = "SELECT [Version Code] as Plan_Version, [Fiscal Year] as FiscalYear,[Fiscal Month Sequence] FiscalMonth, " & WeekNo & " as FiscalWeek, convert(numeric(38,20),[SLS NET $ W" & WeekNo & "]) as Sales, FROM " & TableName
        Dts.Variables("SQLStatement").Value = SQLStmt

        Dts.TaskResult = ScriptResults.Success
    End Sub

To set up the data flow, you must first enter a valid SQL Statement in the SQLStatement variable. Your variable will then be replaced with a new one during each loop.

I hope you find this useful.

Activating SSRS Report Content Types for SharePoint

For information on how to set up a report library and the relevant content types in SharePoint see this previous post – Create A Sharepoint SSRS Report Library

I recently had trouble publishing an SSRS report to SharePoint. I was unable to find the Report Server content types on the library. I needed to activate the Report Server Integration Feature in order to be able to add the SSRS content types to the library. Here is how to do that.

Go to Site Settings

Under Site Collection Administration, choose Site collection features

Beside Report Server Integration Feature click the Activate button.

That’s it, you’re done. Now you will find the Report Server content types listed in the Site Content Types

Moving SharePoint Documents to the File System

You’ll want to read my previous post Moving SharePoint List Attachments to the File System, to get all the details and requirements for setting up and running these SSIS script tasks.

This is an SSIS Package code which will iterate through the document library to get some relevant information about the documents, and then move specified documents from a document library to the file system.

I will just explain the two script tasks steps, as the rest will be specific to your task.

Populate SP_ExpenseAttachments Sript Task

This code iterate through the document library to get some relevant information about the documents

using System;
using System.Data;
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.IO;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Net;

namespace ST_573f63e769424529b4c14ec196d01e4f.csproj
{
    [System.AddIn.AddIn("ScriptMain", Version = "1.0", Publisher = "", Description = "")]
    public partial class ScriptMain : Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Tasks.ScriptTask.VSTARTScriptObjectModelBase
    {

        #region VSTA generated code
        enum ScriptResults
        {
            Success = Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.DTSExecResult.Success,
            Failure = Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.DTSExecResult.Failure
        };
        #endregion

        /*
        The execution engine calls this method when the task executes.
        To access the object model, use the Dts property. Connections, variables, events,
        and logging features are available as members of the Dts property as shown in the following examples.

        To reference a variable, call Dts.Variables["MyCaseSensitiveVariableName"].Value;
        To post a log entry, call Dts.Log("This is my log text", 999, null);
        To fire an event, call Dts.Events.FireInformation(99, "test", "hit the help message", "", 0, true);

        To use the connections collection use something like the following:
        ConnectionManager cm = Dts.Connections.Add("OLEDB");
        cm.ConnectionString = "Data Source=localhost;Initial Catalog=AdventureWorks;Provider=SQLNCLI10;Integrated Security=SSPI;Auto Translate=False;";

        Before returning from this method, set the value of Dts.TaskResult to indicate success or failure.

        To open Help, press F1.
    */

        public void Main()
        {
            // Read the Library document info and write it to a SQL table

            string SharePointSite = (string)Dts.Variables["SPSite"].Value;
            SPSite mySite = new SPSite(SharePointSite);
            SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb();
            SPList myList = myWeb.Lists["ExpenseAttachments"];
            SPDocumentLibrary myLibrary = (SPDocumentLibrary)myList;
            SPListItemCollection collListItems = myLibrary.Items;

            foreach (SPListItem myListItem in collListItems)
           {
               String ItemId = myListItem.ID.ToString();
               String attachmentAbsoluteURL = SharePointSite + "/" + myListItem.File.Url;

                String attachmentname = myListItem.File.Name;

                //Set up SQL Connection

                string sSqlConn = Dts.Variables["SqlConn"].Value.ToString();
                SqlConnection sqlConnection1 = new SqlConnection(sSqlConn);
                SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand();
                SqlDataReader reader;
                cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text;
                cmd.Connection = sqlConnection1;
                sqlConnection1.Open();

                cmd.CommandText = "INSERT INTO SP_ExpenseAttachments (WorkflowName,DocumentLibrarySharePointID,AttachmentName,AttachmentURL) VALUES ('Expense','" + ItemId + "','" + attachmentname + "','" + attachmentAbsoluteURL + "')";

                reader = cmd.ExecuteReader();
                sqlConnection1.Close();

                    }

                    Dts.TaskResult = (int)ScriptResults.Success;
                }
            }
        }

Read Attachment information and move Expense attachments

This code accepts a document id from a variable, populates some relevant information about the document into a SQL table and copies and renames the document to the file system.

using System;
using System.Data;
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.IO;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Net;

namespace ST_573f63e769424529b4c14ec196d01e4f.csproj
{
    [System.AddIn.AddIn("ScriptMain", Version = "1.0", Publisher = "", Description = "")]
    public partial class ScriptMain : Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Tasks.ScriptTask.VSTARTScriptObjectModelBase
    {

        #region VSTA generated code
        enum ScriptResults
        {
            Success = Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.DTSExecResult.Success,
            Failure = Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.DTSExecResult.Failure
        };
        #endregion

        /*
        The execution engine calls this method when the task executes.
        To access the object model, use the Dts property. Connections, variables, events,
        and logging features are available as members of the Dts property as shown in the following examples.

        To reference a variable, call Dts.Variables["MyCaseSensitiveVariableName"].Value;
        To post a log entry, call Dts.Log("This is my log text", 999, null);
        To fire an event, call Dts.Events.FireInformation(99, "test", "hit the help message", "", 0, true);

        To use the connections collection use something like the following:
        ConnectionManager cm = Dts.Connections.Add("OLEDB");
        cm.ConnectionString = "Data Source=localhost;Initial Catalog=AdventureWorks;Provider=SQLNCLI10;Integrated Security=SSPI;Auto Translate=False;";

        Before returning from this method, set the value of Dts.TaskResult to indicate success or failure.

        To open Help, press F1.
    */

        public void Main()
        {
            // Read the document info and write it to a SQL table

            string SharePointSite = (string)Dts.Variables["SPSite"].Value;
            SPSite mySite = new SPSite(SharePointSite);
            SPWeb myWeb = mySite.OpenWeb();
            SPList myList = myWeb.Lists["ExpenseAttachments"];
            SPDocumentLibrary myLibrary = (SPDocumentLibrary)myList;
            SPListItemCollection collListItems = myLibrary.Items;

            int ItemID = (int)Dts.Variables["ItemID"].Value;
            String sItemID = ItemID.ToString();

            SPListItem myListItem = myList.GetItemById(ItemID);
            String attachmentAbsoluteURL = SharePointSite + "/" + myListItem.File.Url;

                String attachmentname = myListItem.File.Name;

                //Set up SQL Connection

                string sSqlConn = Dts.Variables["SqlConn"].Value.ToString();
                SqlConnection sqlConnection1 = new SqlConnection(sSqlConn);
                SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand();
                SqlDataReader reader;
                cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text;
                cmd.Connection = sqlConnection1;
                sqlConnection1.Open();

                cmd.CommandText = "INSERT INTO SP_Attachments  (WorkflowName, DocumentLibrarySharePointID, AttachmentName, AttachmentURL, Moved, NewFileName) VALUES ('Expense','" + ItemID +"','" + attachmentname + "','" + attachmentAbsoluteURL + "','" + 0 + "','E' + RIGHT('00000000000' + CAST(" + ItemID + " as VARCHAR),11)" + ")";

                reader = cmd.ExecuteReader();
                sqlConnection1.Close();

                string MRI = (string)Dts.Variables["MRI_File_Location"].Value;
                DirectoryInfo dir = new DirectoryInfo(MRI);

                if (dir.Exists)
                {

                    // Create the filename for local storage using

                    String FileExt = attachmentname.Substring(attachmentname.Length-4);
                    String ItemNum = "00000000000" + sItemID;
                    String ItemName = ItemNum.Substring(sItemID.Length, 11);
                    String FileName = "\E" + ItemName + FileExt;
                    FileInfo file = new FileInfo(dir.FullName + FileName);

                    if (!file.Exists)
                    {
                        if (attachmentAbsoluteURL.Length != 0)
                        {
                            // download the file from SharePoint or Archive file system to local folder 
                            WebClient client = new WebClient();

                            //download the file from SharePoint 

                            client.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
                            client.DownloadFile(attachmentAbsoluteURL, file.FullName);

                        }
                        //Mark record as Moved
                        sqlConnection1.Open();
                        DateTime Now = DateTime.Now;
                        cmd.CommandText = "UPDATE SP_Attachments SET Moved = 1, Moved_Date = '" + Now + "' WHERE WorkflowName = 'Expense' and DocumentLibrarySharePointID = '" + ItemID + "'";
                        reader = cmd.ExecuteReader();
                        sqlConnection1.Close();

                    }

                    Dts.TaskResult = (int)ScriptResults.Success;
                }
            }
        }
    }

Moving SharePoint List Attachments to the File System

You can use a Script Task in SSIS to move SharePoint list attachments to the file system. This C# code references the Microsoft.SharePoint assembly. It’s very important to note that the the SharePoint attachments have to be on the same server that the package is running on. Thes means that the package can only run on SSIS installed on the SharePoint box where the attachments are. You will need to install SSIS and the corresponding msdb database on your SharePoint server if it isn’t already installed.

This is what the final package looks like:

Most of the these tasks are self explanatory and you’ll need to set up your own tables and logic to accomplish the goals of your package. You’ll want a table that tells you which items have attachments. See this post for details on how to import data from a SharePoint list. Attachments is one of the fields you can import, which is simply a bit that says whether or not the list item has any attachments.

These are the variables used in the package:

For Each Loop:

Variables used in the script task:

References needed in the script task:

Here is the C# code:

using System;
using System.Data;
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.IO;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Net;

namespace ST_573f63e769424529b4c14ec196d01e4f.csproj
{
    [System.AddIn.AddIn("ScriptMain", Version = "1.0", Publisher = "", Description = "")]
    public partial class ScriptMain : Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Tasks.ScriptTask.VSTARTScriptObjectModelBase
    {

        #region VSTA generated code
        enum ScriptResults
        {
            Success = Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.DTSExecResult.Success,
            Failure = Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.DTSExecResult.Failure
        };
        #endregion

        /*
        The execution engine calls this method when the task executes.
        To access the object model, use the Dts property. Connections, variables, events,
        and logging features are available as members of the Dts property as shown in the following examples.

        To reference a variable, call Dts.Variables["MyCaseSensitiveVariableName"].Value;
        To post a log entry, call Dts.Log("This is my log text", 999, null);
        To fire an event, call Dts.Events.FireInformation(99, "test", "hit the help message", "", 0, true);

        To use the connections collection use something like the following:
        ConnectionManager cm = Dts.Connections.Add("OLEDB");
        cm.ConnectionString = "Data Source=localhost;Initial Catalog=AdventureWorks;Provider=SQLNCLI10;Integrated Security=SSPI;Auto Translate=False;";

        Before returning from this method, set the value of Dts.TaskResult to indicate success or failure.

        To open Help, press F1.
    */

        public void Main()
        {
            // Read the attachments info and write it to a SQL table

            string SharePointSite = (string)Dts.Variables["SPSite"].Value;
            SPSite mySite = new SPSite(SharePointSite);
            //SPSite mySite = new SPSite("http://primenetdev/forms");
            SPWeb myweb = mySite.OpenWeb();
            SPList myList = myweb.Lists["Fitness Reimbursement Authorization"];

            int ItemID = (int)Dts.Variables["ItemID"].Value;
            SPListItem myListItem = myList.GetItemById(ItemID);
            int i = 1;
            foreach (String attachmentname in myListItem.Attachments)
            {
                //                MessageBox.Show("Each attachment");
                String attachmentAbsoluteURL =
                myListItem.Attachments.UrlPrefix // gets the containing directory URL
                + attachmentname;

                //Set up SQL Connection

                string sSqlConn = Dts.Variables["SqlConn"].Value.ToString();

                SqlConnection sqlConnection1 = new SqlConnection(sSqlConn);

                SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand();

                SqlDataReader reader;

                cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text;

                cmd.Connection = sqlConnection1;

                sqlConnection1.Open();
                //If its the first attachement, name it 12 digits ending in the Item ID
                if ((i.Equals(1)))
                {
                    cmd.CommandText = "INSERT INTO SP_Attachments  (WorkflowName, ItemSharePointID, AttachmentName, AttachmentURL, Moved, NewFileName) VALUES ('Fitness','" + ItemID + "','" + attachmentname + "','" + attachmentAbsoluteURL + "','" + 0 + "','F' + RIGHT('00000000000' + CAST(" + ItemID + " as VARCHAR),11)" + ")";
                }
                //Otherwise append an attachment id
                else
                {
                    cmd.CommandText = "INSERT INTO SP_Attachments  (WorkflowName, ItemSharePointID, AttachmentName, AttachmentURL, Moved, NewFileName) VALUES ('Fitness','" + ItemID + "','" + attachmentname + "','" + attachmentAbsoluteURL + "','" + 0 + "','F' + RIGHT('00000000000' + CAST(" + ItemID + " as VARCHAR),11) + CAST(" + i + "as VARCHAR))";
                }
                reader = cmd.ExecuteReader();
                sqlConnection1.Close();

                string MRI = (string)Dts.Variables["MRI_File_Location"].Value;
                DirectoryInfo dir = new DirectoryInfo(MRI);

                if (dir.Exists)
                {

                    // Create the filename for local storage using 

                    String ItemNum = "00000000000" + ItemID.ToString();
                    String ItemName = ItemNum.Substring(ItemID.ToString().Length, 11);
                    String FileName = "\F" + ItemName + i;
                    //If its the first attachement, name it 12 digits ending in the Item ID, otherwise append which attachement it is
                    if ((i.Equals(1)))
                    {
                        FileName = "\F" + ItemName;
                    }
                    FileInfo file = new FileInfo(dir.FullName + FileName);
                    i = i + 1;

                    if (!file.Exists)
                    {

                        if (attachmentAbsoluteURL.Length != 0)
                        {
                            // download the file from SharePoint or Archive file system to local folder 

                            WebClient client = new WebClient();

                            //if (Strings.Left(fileUrl, 4).ToLower() == "http") {
                            //download the file from SharePoint 

                            client.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

                            client.DownloadFile(attachmentAbsoluteURL, file.FullName);

                        }
                        //Mark record as Moved
                        sqlConnection1.Open();
                        DateTime Now = DateTime.Now;
                        cmd.CommandText = "UPDATE SP_Attachments SET Moved = 1, Moved_Date = '" + Now + "' WHERE ItemSharePointID = '" + ItemID + "'";
                        reader = cmd.ExecuteReader();
                        sqlConnection1.Close();
                        //            MessageBox.Show("End");

                    }

                    Dts.TaskResult = (int)ScriptResults.Success;
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Interpreting Active Directory UserAccountControl

After importing users from Active Directory into a data warehouse for a client, there was a need to filter the list based only on Enabled users. The functionality in Active Directory to indicate Enabled or Disabled is to right click on the user and select Disable Account.

This information does not get stored as a simple ‘Enabled’ or ‘Disabled’ flag, but is stored as part of a bitmask with a combination of various attributes, including whether the account in disabled. You could wade through this Microsoft Support article How to use the UserAccountControl flags to manipulate user account properties, but at a high level what you need to know is that the flags are cumulative. For example to disable a user’s account the UserAccountControl attribute is set to to 0x0202 (0x002 + 0x0200). In decimal, which is how it will be imported into a SQL table, this is 514 (2 + 512). For a Workstation Trust Account it’s 4098 (4096 + 2). This means that Disabled accounts can have a multitude of values, depending on the type of account and what other attributes have been set.

Simply importing the UserAccountControl would not allow an easy way to identify Enabled vs Disabled accounts. One would have to build a lookup table of all possible combinations of attributes to determine which values in the UserAccountControl field indicate Disabled accounts. For example 514 and 4098 are both Disabled accounts.

I wanted a way of importing ALL the users and mapping the value for Enabled/Disabled. The simplest way to do this is to import first the Enabled users and then the Disabled users. I will build on the C# script task from previous posts, the latest version of which you can find here: Importing Empty Fields from Active Directory.

Simply add this to the filter in the script:

ENABLED USERS:

    //Where useraccountcontrol <>2 means account is enabled
    ds.Filter = "(&(objectClass=user)(!useraccountcontrol:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2))";

DISABLED USERS:

    //Where useraccountcontrol = 2 means account is enabled
    ds.Filter = "(&(objectClass=user)(useraccountcontrol:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2))";

You can duplicate the C# code and have one script for Enabled users and one for Disabled users. Add an IsEnabled field to the the table and alter the INSERT statement in the code to populate the field.

Helpful References:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/connectors/thread/467a8c66-4473-4074-8ecc-900b4fc51b19

http://rajnishbhatia19.blogspot.ca/2008/11/active-directory-useraccountcontrol.html

How to use the UserAccountControl flags to manipulate user account properties

Importing Empty Fields from Active Directory

Further to the series of posts on importing data from Active Directory, I’ve run into a new issue. For this client I built the exact same solution as described here Getting Around Active Directory Paging on SSIS Import, but got this lovely error message: “Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.” It turns out there were empty values in some of the single-value fields. I hadn’t run into this previously, but I found a neat solution.

In the original solution I outlined how to create a simple SSIS script task in C# to import single value fields from Active Directory. I’ve added to this code to create a solution to import empty single-value fields.

A For Each statement for single-value fields has been added to the script to check if the field is empty before setting the variable value. Even though there is only one possible value for a single value field, the For Each statement still works nicely to check if it’s empty. Here is the code snippet of the For Each statement:

    //If the property is null, set the variable to blank, else set it to the value in the property
    string Mail = "";
    ResultPropertyValueCollection valueCollectionMail = results.Properties["Mail"];
    foreach (String sField in valueCollectionMail)
    {
        //Replace any single quotes with two single quotes for SQL Statement
        Mail = sField.Replace("'", "''"); 
    }

Here is the complete code. for more details on how to create the SSIS package and set up the references for the script task, please see Getting Around Active Directory Paging on SSIS Import.

        public void Main()
 
{
 
 //Set up the AD connection;
 
using (DirectorySearcher ds = new DirectorySearcher())
 
{
 
//Edit the filter for your purposes;
 
ds.Filter = "(&(objectClass=user))";
 
ds.SearchScope = SearchScope.Subtree;
 
ds.PageSize = 1000;
 
//This will page through the records 1000 at a time;
 
//Set up SQL Connection
 
string sSqlConn = Dts.Variables["SqlConn"].Value.ToString();
 
SqlConnection sqlConnection1 = new SqlConnection(sSqlConn);
 
SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand();
 
SqlDataReader reader;
 
cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text;
 
cmd.Connection = sqlConnection1;
 
//Read all records in AD that meet the search criteria into a Collection
 
using (SearchResultCollection src = ds.FindAll())
 
{
 
//For each record object in the Collection, insert a record into the SQL table
 
foreach (SearchResult results in src)
 
{
    string sAMAccountName = results.Properties["sAMAccountName"][0].ToString();
    string objectClass = results.Properties["objectClass"][0].ToString();

    //If the property is null, set the variable to blank, otherweise set it to the value in the property
    string Mail = "";
    ResultPropertyValueCollection valueCollectionMail = results.Properties["Mail"];
    foreach (String sField in valueCollectionMail)
    {
        Mail = sField.Replace("'", "''"); //Replace any single quotes with two single quotes for SQL Statement
    }

    //If the property is null, set the variable to blank, otherweise set it to the value in the property
    string displayName = "";
    ResultPropertyValueCollection valueCollectiondisplayName = results.Properties["displayName"];
    foreach (String sField in valueCollectiondisplayName)
    {
        displayName = sField.Replace("'", "''"); //Replace any single quotes with two single quotes for SQL Statement
    }

 
sqlConnection1.Open();

cmd.CommandText = "INSERT INTO AD_Users (sAMAccountName, objectClass, Mail, displayName) VALUES ('" + sAMAccountName + "','" + objectClass + "','" + Mail + "','" + displayName +"')";
 
reader = cmd.ExecuteReader();
 
sqlConnection1.Close();
 
} } } }

Here are links to the other posts in the Active Directory series:

Importing Data from Active Directory using SSIS Data Flows

How to Query Multi-Value Fields in Active Directory using SSIS

How to Query Multi Value fields in Active Directory using SSIS

Apparently what’s even more difficult than importing data from AD is figuring out how to import multi-value objects from Active Directory. “Description” is an example of a standard AD multi-value field. My client had many custom multi-value fields added to AD and needed to import the data from these fields into tables in a database. You can accomplish this easily this by adding a bit of code to the C# code importing the single value attributes as outlined in my previous post Getting Around AD Paging on SSIS Import.

This C# code is much simpler than trying to import each multi-value field using a Data Flow task. Using Data Flow tasks can be done but it has some tricky problems like importing only those records with values in the multi-value field, working around paging, and how to deal with apparently empty objects that your query returns even though you specified that it only return those objects with values. It’s also quite a bit slower as you need to populate variables and pass those variables to loops to iterate thru the multi-values for one account at a time.

Here is the code for importing one multi-value attribute into a table. This code should be placed at an appropriate spot within the “foreach (SearchResults” loop outlined in the Getting Around AD Paging on SSIS Import post.

string propertyName = “Description”; //or whichever multi-value field you are importing

ResultPropertyValueCollection valueCollection = results.Properties[propertyName];

//Iterate thru the collection for the user and insert each value from the multi-value field into a table

foreach (String sMultiValueField in valueCollection)

{

string sValue = sMultiValueField.Replace(“‘”, “””); //Replace any single quotes with double quotes

sqlConnection1.Open();

cmd.CommandText =

“INSERT INTO User_Descriptions (sAMAccountName,Description) VALUES (‘” + sAMAccountName + “‘,'” + sValue + “‘)”;

reader = cmd.ExecuteReader();

sqlConnection1.Close();

}

The nice thing about this code is that you can iterate through any records, even if the multi-value field is empty. It won’t fail, it just won’t return a record. This means you can add this same chunk of code multiple times edited for several different multi-value fields within the same script task, and have all your tables updated using the same script. The package is very easy to maintain, with no package variables, no complex package logic, just a simple script. Very elegant!