SSIS /dev/null

While working with SSIS 2008 recently, I needed some random data. While I was poking around on the same site, I found this:

http://www.sqlis.com/post/Trash-Destination-Adapter.aspx

From their webpage:
When developing a package it is very useful to have a destination adapter that does nothing but consume rows with no setup requirement. You often want run a package part way through development, or just add a path so you can set a Data Viewer. There are stock tasks that can be used, but with the Trash Destination all columns are treated as selected automatically (usage type of read-only), so the pipeline knows they are required. It is also obvious that this is for development or diagnostic purposes, and is clearly not a part of the functional design of the package.



So, basically it's a /dev/null for SSIS. Cool!

SSIS Sample Data

While working with SSIS 2008 recently, I needed some random data. I found this:

http://www.sqlis.com/post/Data-Generator-Source-Adapter.aspx

From their webpage:
It generates random integer (DT_I4) and string (DT_WSTR) data and places them in the pipeline. You specify how many columns of each you would like and for any string columns you pass a fixed length value. You then need to specify how many rows in total you require to be generated.