Question

I am using SSIS to copy data from a table in Oracle to a table in SQL Server 2005. There’s no transformation required, so it’s just a straight line connecting OLE DB Source to OLE DB Destination. Fairly simple and works, but during execution, a record in the Oracle table contains a timestamp value of the year 0002 in encountered, so SSIS errors out due to an oveflow exception.

If I create an extra column in SQL Server with the data type of string, and remap, then that works fine. However, I prefer to keep the Datatime column and use it in my destination. I am OK with replacing the year 0002 with something like 1900 or something like that. So what’s the best way to achieve this if-then-else in SSIS?

Answer 1

I usually let Oracle deal with that by using something like this in my source query:

CAST( Coalesce (
CASE 
 WHEN TO_CHAR(Effective_Date,'yyyy-mm-dd HH24:MI:SS') < '1900-01-01 00:00:00' 
       THEN TO_DATE('9999-12-31 00:00:00','yyyy-mm-dd HH24:MI:SS') 
 ELSE Effective_Date 
END ,TO_DATE('9999-12-31 00:00:00','yyyy-mm-dd HH24:MI:SS')) AS DATE) AS Effective_Date

This sets a valid but very future date (dictated by the company I am on contract to as the representation of an invalid date in a required date field. You could also use '1900-01-01 00:00:00' instead of '9999-12-31 00:00:00') in cases where the original date is null or less than 1900-01-01 00:00:00. It also avoids post processing by SSIS on the date field.