more expression syntax

Hi,

This is a follow up to an earlier question. I'm having a heck of a time here. What I'm doing is reading a value into a SSIS variable and trying to evaluate it. I know the value is huge (over 4000 chars) and what I think should happen in my package isn't (I guess because this variable is so big).

What I WANTED to do is a straight character check:

@.[User::xml_output] == "ABC"

but that wasn't working... so I deceided to try the len function.

However xml_output is too big and it's also not working. How would I check to see if the len is greater than 17 characters? Here is what I have so far...and none of it works.

len(trim(DT_WSTR,18,1252)@.[User::xml_output])) > 17

len(trim(@.[User::xml_output])) > 17

(DT_WSTR,18)@.[User::xml_output] > 17

I just want to trim @.[User::xml_output] and see if it's greater than 17 characters. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Phil

Well, you can do it with script. Phil is laughing, but I'm serious. Script can handle strings over 4,000 chars, but expressions apparently cannot.

I don't know if you're trying to do this in a data flow or a control flow, but here is the code for a control flow script task that gets the length of your variable and puts it into an integer variable named "length". You would of course need to list "xml_output" and "length" in the ReadOnlyVariables and ReadWriteVariables properties respectively.

Code Snippet

Public Sub Main()
Dts.Variables("length").Value = Dts.Variables("xml_output").Value.ToString.Length
Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success
End Sub

|||Thanks.|||

JayH wrote:

Well, you can do it with script. Phil is laughing, but I'm serious. Script can handle strings over 4,000 chars, but expressions apparently cannot.

If you're referring to me, well, I'm always in favor of using the right tool for the job. That includes being efficient. This solutions works perfectly because his string is over 4,000 characters.|||

I figured you guys worked together or something

It's actually a huge shortcoming of expression syntax to not be able to include over 4000 characters. I was trying to evaluate some XML output and it was over the 4k limit and it basically always assumed it was under 17 characters because that's what my expression syntax was looking for either greater than or less than 17 characters. The less than would always hit because it just ignored the large size of the variable. Work-arounds are good, but in this case I think the language needs to adapt....

Phil

sql