Unhandled Exception: System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

Once again, I took to the web, looking for the answer.  I found links and articles, read them, tried them and still didn’t work.  Last night, I was talking to a ex co-worker at Microsoft who is a seasoned C# developer and I brought up the question.  He, of course, was in bed and I was pretty much talking to myself via MSN Live Messenger.

But this morning he responded to my question:

RD says (8:10 AM): look at your references in your project, and make sure all of them are set to copy local. Then when you deploy, deploy all the dlls with your exe.

you can find this by expanding ‘References’ –> click on the reference and go to its property.  There look for, Copy Local.  By default, this is set to False.  Change it to True.  Setting the references to True will tell Visual Studio to extract the DLL from where-ever the hell it is stored (actually, you can tell where it is stored) to the bin\debug or bin\release folder when the project is compiled.  All you have to do afterward is copy the freshly minted .exec, .dlls, and .config (if one is used) to any Windows machine and it will work.

Thanks RD.

I asked a coworker who has more experience than I do when it comes to SSIS pkgs and he suggested that I create a staging table with the columns being varchar.  Once the data is in there, I could create a view/sproc to import from the staging table to the actual table with converts/casts in place.  This step has made life a bit easier for me because I was trying to figure out why the hell SSIS 4-bytes unsigned/signed integer won’t get go into SQL’s int column nicely!

The setup: A table has over 255 columns and I’m using office 2010.

I went all over the place looking for a solution.  I went to Microsoft’s social msdn site and asked for help (here and here).  Some attempted to help but none was able to provide a solution.  I even went on to ask on #ssis on twitter and no one responded, which really sucked ass.  I asked my coworkers here to see if they have any idea.  They suggested the use of Office 2010 Access Database Engine.  This was suppose to be the end all be all to my problem but it wasn’t.

No matter how I configured the connection manager for the Office 2010 Access Database Engine, The destination column is never more than 255 columns.  I have tried it on four different computers thinking that I might be missing something.  So I gave up for a few days.

My machine here at work has cozyRoc SSIS+ software installed so I used the Excel Plus task and it work SOOOO FLAWLESSLY.  I didn’t even need to have a data conversion transformation task setup!  The export was faster than I was able to blink; however, I didn’t want to rely on a 3rd party application.  There HAS to be a way to get this information without a 3rd party app.

After f-ing around on this a few more days, I was going to relent and use cozyRoc’s Excel Plus task but I refused to give up and wanted one more go.  I recall that I can use Csharp with the Script Task so I tried that.  I looked online and there was a lot of sites that talked about importing from Excel to SQL, which is the opposite of what I want.

After some looking and switching between Bing and Google and keywords, I found a few Csharp code that would work because a lot of them had an interface.  I don’t care about the interface and wanted a console app.  The one I ended up using was from this site.  I was able to take that bit of code, fix up some of the problems with it and made it into an executable.

If you were to take the code from that site and stick in into the Script Task, you will need to upgrade the project to .net 3.5 because by default, SSIS creates Csharp project as .net 2.0.  In addition, because the Csharp code take one argument, your Script Task will fail because you can’t past arguments into SSIS.  You will get an error that read something like this:

Error loading ‘Package.dtsx’ : The package failed to load due to error 0xC0010014 “One or more error occurred. There should be more specific errors preceding this one that explains the details of the errors. This message is used as a return value from functions that encounter errors.”. This occurs when CPackage::LoadFromXML fails.

That’s why I adjusted the original code and remove stuff that didn’t work or were unused or unnecessary.  See attachment below for my version, which include the source code, executeable, and config file.  The config file will prevent you from having to recompile everytime you want to change the sql syntax, server, or filename. You’re welcome.

Ah yes, you might need Visual Studio 2010 or NotePad++ to look at the solution.

The setup: A table has over 255 columns and I’m using office 2010.

I went all over the place looking for a solution.  I went to Microsoft’s social msdn site and asked for help (here and here).  Some attempted to help but none was able to provide a solution.  I even went on to ask on #ssis on twitter and no one responded, which really sucked ass.  I asked my coworkers here to see if they have any idea.  They suggested the use of Office 2010 Access Database Engine.  This was suppose to be the end all be all to my problem but it wasn’t.

No matter how I configured the connection manager for the Office 2010 Access Database Engine, The destination column is never more than 255 columns.  I have tried it on four different computers thinking that I might be missing something.  So I gave up for a few days.

My machine here at work has cozyRoc SSIS+ software installed so I used the Excel Plus task and it work SOOOO FLAWLESSLY.  I didn’t even need to have a data conversion transformation task setup!  The export was faster than I was able to blink; however, I didn’t want to rely on a 3rd party application.  There HAS to be a way to get this information without a 3rd party app.

After f-ing around on this a few more days, I was going to relent and use cozyRoc’s Excel Plus task but I refused to give up and wanted one more go.  I recall that I can use Csharp with the Script Task so I tried that.  I looked online and there was a lot of sites that talked about importing from Excel to SQL, which is the opposite of what I want.

After some looking and switching between Bing and Google and keywords, I found a few Csharp code that would work because a lot of them had an interface.  I don’t care about the interface and wanted a console app.  The one I ended up using was from this site.  I was able to take that bit of code, fix up some of the problems with it and made it into an executable.

If you were to take the code from that site and stick in into the Script Task, you will need to upgrade the project to .net 3.5 because by default, SSIS creates Csharp project as .net 2.0.  In addition, because the Csharp code take one argument, your Script Task will fail because you can’t past arguments into SSIS.  You will get an error that read something like this:

Error loading ‘Package.dtsx’ : The package failed to load due to error 0xC0010014 “One or more error occurred. There should be more specific errors preceding this one that explains the details of the errors. This message is used as a return value from functions that encounter errors.”. This occurs when CPackage::LoadFromXML fails.

That’s why I adjusted the original code and remove stuff that didn’t work or were unused or unnecessary.  See attachment below for my version, which include the source code, executeable, and config file.  The config file will prevent you from having to recompile everytime you want to change the sql syntax, server, or filename. You’re welcome.

Ah yes, you might need Visual Studio 2010 or NotePad++ to look at the solution.

They are a bit confusing to me so I dug and dug and found the following solution:

These scripts was written by Tara Duggan.  I love it because I don’t have to use any type of lookup tables, offsets, or converting things back to UTC.  It allows me to convert from one timezone to another with ease.  When I first saw it, I groan thinking it was going to be another complicated BS that I have to read thru to understand, but it wasn’t.  She (I’m guessing she is a she and not a he unless Tara happens to be a unisex name) originally posted these functions to the sqlteam.com’s forum, which is now closed. 

In case, sqlteam.com decided to hid the forum any deeper, I ripped it from there and posted on here because I know I won’t be going anywhere for a while.  Click the download arrow below to download her easy to use script.

So the logic I can up with is as followed:

declare @a datetime

select @a = dateadd(ms, dbo.fn_GetOffSet(4, getutcdate()), getutcdate())

select filestamp =
case
when DATEPART(hh, @a) between 01 and 09 and DATEPART(mi, @a) < 15
     then convert(varchar(8), @a, 112) + '0' + convert(varchar(8),DATEPART(HH, @a)) + '00'
when DATEPART(hh, @a) < 09 and DATEPART(mi, @a) > 15
     then convert(varchar(8), @a, 112) + '0' + convert(varchar(8),DATEPART(HH, @a) + 1) + '00'
when DATEPART(hh, @a) < 23 and DATEPART(mi, @a) > 15
     then convert(varchar(8), @a, 112) + convert(varchar(8),DATEPART(HH, @a) + 1) + '00'
when DATEPART(hh, @a) < 23 and DATEPART(mi, @a) < 15
     then convert(varchar(8), @a, 112) + convert(varchar(8),DATEPART(HH, @a)) + '00'
when DATEPART(hh, @a) = 23 and DATEPART(mi, @a) > 15
     then convert(varchar(8), DATEADD(Day, +1, @a)) + '0000'
else 'na; something messed up'
end

Because I’m rounding up an hour, I had to address when the clock changes from 2300 to 0000, which mean, I need to add an extra day. So now I basically take this bit of code, stick it into the SSIS package I’m working on, pass the value to SSIS’ global variable so I can use it in the expression.

I hope you aren’t confused in that last portion .

*Update*

Well, I put the script through the steps and SSIS failed telling me that I can’t take the output from the query above and store it as a String. After playing around with different data type in SSIS for a bit and getting annoyed, I finally relent and stuck the above into a function:

create function fn_FileCreatedTime
(@a datetime)

returns varchar(20)
as
begin
 declare @results varchar(20)

select @results =
 case
 when DATEPART(hh, @a) between 01 and 09 and DATEPART(mi, @a) < 15
      then convert(varchar(8), @a, 112) + '0' + convert(varchar(8),DATEPART(HH, @a)) + '00'
 when DATEPART(hh, @a) < 09 and DATEPART(mi, @a) > 15
      then convert(varchar(8), @a, 112) + '0' + convert(varchar(8),DATEPART(HH, @a) + 1) + '00'
 when DATEPART(hh, @a) < 23 and DATEPART(mi, @a) > 15
      then convert(varchar(8), @a, 112) + convert(varchar(8),DATEPART(HH, @a) + 1) + '00'
 when DATEPART(hh, @a) < 23 and DATEPART(mi, @a) < 15
      then convert(varchar(8), @a, 112) + convert(varchar(8),DATEPART(HH, @a)) + '00'
 when DATEPART(hh, @a) = 23 and DATEPART(mi, @a) > 15
      then convert(varchar(8), DATEADD(Day, +1, @a)) + '0000'
 else 'na; something messed up'
 end
 return @results
end

Then I ran the following query to get the output and convert it to varchar(20)

select convert(varchar(20),dbo.fn_FileCreatedTime(dateadd(ms, dbo.fn_GetTimeZoneOffset(4, getutcdate()), getutcdate())))

So the logic I can up with is as followed:

declare @a datetime

select @a = dateadd(ms, dbo.fn_GetOffSet(4, getutcdate()), getutcdate())

select filestamp =
case
when DATEPART(hh, @a) between 01 and 09 and DATEPART(mi, @a) < 15
     then convert(varchar(8), @a, 112) + '0' + convert(varchar(max),DATEPART(HH, @a)) + '00'
when DATEPART(hh, @a) < 09 and DATEPART(mi, @a) > 15
     then convert(varchar(8), @a, 112) + '0' + convert(varchar(max),DATEPART(HH, @a) + 1) + '00'
when DATEPART(hh, @a) < 23 and DATEPART(mi, @a) > 15
     then convert(varchar(8), @a, 112) + convert(varchar(max),DATEPART(HH, @a) + 1) + '00'
when DATEPART(hh, @a) = 23 and DATEPART(mi, @a) > 15
     then convert(varchar(8), DATEADD(Day, +1, @a)) + '0000'
else 'na; something messed up'
end

Because I’m rounding up an hour, I had to address when the clock changes from 2300 to 0000, which mean, I need to add an extra day. So now I basically take this bit of code, stick it into the SSIS package I’m working on, pass the value to SSIS’ global variable so I can use it in the expression.

I hope you aren’t confused in that last portion .

So this past week, I had a bunch of files that were being created via SSIS and one of the requirements were that the file names had to have a specific timestamp as its suffix followed by a .xml extension.

In SSIS, I created a variable and gave it the file name. In the filename connection manager, I gave it an expression.  The expression look as followed:

@[User::UsrFileName]
+ (DT_STR,4,1252) DatePart(“yyyy”,getdate()) + Right(“0″
+ (DT_STR,4,1252) DatePart(“m”,getdate()),2) + Right(“0″
+ (DT_STR,4,1252) DatePart(“d”,getdate()),2) + “.xml”

Some files needed hours and minutes, to get that result, I added:

@[User::UsrFileName]
+ (DT_STR,4,1252) DatePart(“yyyy”,getdate())
+ Right(“0″ + (DT_STR,4,1252) DatePart(“m”,getdate()),2)
+ Right(“0″ + (DT_STR,4,1252) DatePart(“d”,getdate()),2)
+ Right(“0″ + (DT_STR,4,1252) DatePart(“hh”,getdate()),2)
+ Right(“0″ + (DT_STR,4,1252) DatePart(“mi”,getdate()),2)
+ “.xml”

Now I didn’t figure this out myself, well the hh and mi, I got because it is SQL. Nope, I got it from another site.  I’m posting the code here for safe keeping as the owner of that blog has not updated it since 2007.  I don’t think he/she know it still exists.

I was told that the best place to get inexpensive but good quality cables and 1gb switches was at monoprice.com.  I have never heard of them until yesterday but my co-worker swore it was a good place.  I went to check it out and man, some of the stuff there are dirty cheap.  Cat5e and Cat6 cables for < $2 for a 6 footer.  Their 1GB switch is only $25 for an 8 porter.  I was sold .

I was told that the best place to get inexpensive but good quality cables and 1gb switches was at monoprice.com.  I have never heard of them until yesterday but my co-worker swore it was a good place.  I went to check it out and man, some of the stuff there are dirty cheap.  Cat5e and Cat6 cables for < $2 for a 6 footer.  Their 1GB switch is only $25 for an 8 porter.  I was sold .