Disabling the flat file destination at run-time?

I noticed that The flat file destination that I am using, creates a blank file everytime even if there are no records processed by the data flow.

I just wanted to know if there is any way to stop this. I dont want to see a chunk of blank files on the disk. (I create the files with a timestamp in the file name so every run creates a new file.)

So I want to implement a logic to stop the creation of these blank files in case there are no records to write into it.

Any suggestion would be of great help.

Regards

Saurabh

One option is to use an Execute SQL in the control flow before the data flow to check the record count, and use a condition on a precedence constraint to the data flow to prevent it from running at all.

Another option is to use a Row Count component in the data flow to capture the number of rows written to the flat file. Set a File System task to delete the file after the data flow, with a precedence constraint that uses the row count to determine whether the File System task should execute.

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well the first option is not suitable for me because I cannot determine the number of records to be written beforehand.

second option looks good. I'll do that but again that will be having to do one extra task. if at all there is any way to stop the file creation then that will be great. (I am playing around with a script component with no luck)

Thanks for your response John!

Please get back if you find out any other way...

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jwelch wrote:

One option is to use an Execute SQL in the control flow before the data flow to check the record count, and use a condition on a precedence constraint to the data flow to prevent it from running at all.

Another option is to use a Row Count component in the data flow to capture the number of rows written to the flat file. Set a File System task to delete the file after the data flow, with a precedence constraint that uses the row count to determine whether the File System task should execute.

Or to adapt a theme, push the data into a raw file or recordset (http://blogs.conchango.com/jamiethomson/archive/2006/06/28/SSIS_3A00_-Comparing-performance-of-a-raw-file-against-a-recordset-destination.aspx) and then use a conditional precedence constraint (as suggested by John) to decide whether to push the data into your flat file or not.

Plenty of ways anyway.

-Jamie

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Sounds good! though me too didn't like to push the intermediate data to the disk, the performance analysis shown by Jamie is really helpful in making a decision.

Thanks for the response. I shall go with this solution insead of adding more complications to my short and sweet package!

Regards

Saurabh