Data and Analytics

Most likely you have a SSIS package to copy file (data) to or from a network location (which is a mapped drive at your server) and the package works perfectly when you run it from business development studio. But problem starts when you run it as a SQL Server job and it fails throwing errors like below: Executed as user: [ ]. Microsoft (R) SQL Server Execute Package Utility  Version 10.50.1600.1 for 64-bit  Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 2010. All rights reserved.    Started:  [ ]  Error: [ ]  Code: 0xC020200E     Source: Data Flow Component Flat File Source [33]     Description: Cannot open the datafile "[  ]".  End Error  Error: [ ]     Code: 0xC004701A     Source: Data Flow Component SSIS.Pipeline     Description: component "Flat File Source" (33) failed the pre-execute phase and returned error code 0xC020200E.  End Error  DTExec: The package execution returned DTSER_FAILURE (1).  Started:  [ ]  Finished: [ ]  Elapsed:  [ ].  The package execution fail

SQL Server table supports up to 1024 colum ns per table which is typically good enough for most of the cases. However if you need to expand a table beyond 1024 columns then you need to use a special table types named as Wide Tables. Wide tables are tables which can have more than 1024 columns and can actually have up to 30,000 columns. For in depth details on wide table, you may want refer http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186986.aspx In this post I will discuss using wide tables in practical life without diving deep into the architecture: Should I use/encourage using wide tables? Simple Answer to this is No . Wide table uses sparse columns to increase the total of columns. This technology creates issues like performance problems, complications with index management, limits execution of DML statements, reduce performance for switch partition operations, prevents using compression etc. Hence unless absolutely necessary, it is not advisable to use wide tables. You m