Making Your SSIS Configuration Files More Readable
When you first create a configuration file in your Integration Services project, the XML contents of the file are just laid out in one long line. This makes reading and/or modifying this file more challenging than it needs to be.
There is an easy way to format your file to alleviate this issue. In BIDS, go to File/Open/File, as in the image below:
Browse to your configuration file and select it to open within BIDS.
My brand new configuration file looks like this image below:
You see that the contents are all on one line. Bleh.
To fix that, you can go to Edit/Advanced/Format Document, as shown below:
I have done that to my config file and now it looks like this:
As you can see, this is much easier to deal with. Just save this document and close it. Now, even when you open it in Notepad, that formatting persists.
This little trick can make dealing with your configurations files a bit easier.
Comments
Comment from Dan English
Time April 15, 2010 at 11:55 am
Nice. Hadn’t seen that option before. To just view the files in BIDS in the cleaner format you can just leverage BIDS Helper as well:) Another assume feature that is included…and it is all free thanks to CodePlex – http://bidshelper.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=dtsConfigFormatter&referringTitle=Home.
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Time April 15, 2010 at 12:02 pm
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Comment from Mark V
Time April 15, 2010 at 12:58 pm
I am just getting acquainted with BIDS Helper and had not seen that feature yet. Sweet. Thanks, gents.
Comment from Eric
Time April 16, 2010 at 12:46 am
K + D. Much quicker…
Comment from Eric
Time April 16, 2010 at 12:46 am
That is CONTROL K + CONTROL D. It stripped my last attempt. ;-)
Comment from stefbauer
Time April 15, 2010 at 11:44 am
Good points! You may also want to check-out bids-helper on codeplex. it has some good features (including the automatic formating of config files) http://bidshelper.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=dtsConfigFormatter&referringTitle=Home