PIVOT Transformation - SSIS 2012 - Complete Tutorial

PIVOT Transformation - SSIS 2012 - Complete Tutorial

Tutorial for PIVOT transformation in SSIS 2012.

Fortunately Pivot Transformation GUI improved too much in SSIS 2012 and you don't need to set PivotUsage in the Advanced Editor in 2008 R2 or earlier.

Just follow simple steps of this tutorial and you will feel how small change in Pivot GUI caused big simplicity on usage of it.

Sometimes, you need to use PIVOT in SSIS.

brief explanation of what PIVOT is from msdn is here:

PIVOT rotates a table-valued expression by turning the unique values from one column in the expression into multiple columns in the output, and performs aggregations where they are required on any remaining column values that are wanted in the final output

This tutorial provides a complete pivot sample on AdventureWorks2012 sample SQL Server database with SSIS 2012...

Assume you want to find order quantities for each product by year.

you may use this query to get the result:

 select
    Product.ProductID,
    Product.Name,
    year(SalesOrderHeader.OrderDate) as OrderYear,
    sum(SalesOrderDetail.OrderQty) as OrderQuantity
from Sales.SalesOrderDetail
inner join Production.Product
on SalesOrderDetail.ProductID=Product.ProductID
inner join Sales.SalesOrderHeader
on SalesOrderDetail.SalesOrderID=SalesOrderHeader.SalesOrderID
group by Product.ProductID,Product.Name,year(SalesOrderHeader.OrderDate)
order by Product.Name,year(SalesOrderHeader.OrderDate)

and this is result of query above:

Now , create a new SSIS package

Add a Data Flow Task

in dataflow tab :

Add a OLE DB Source and connect it to AdventureWorks2012 database in your SQL Server

write the query in SQL command Text of oledb data source,

then add a PIVOT Transformation after OLE DB Data Source

Double click on Pivot Transformation to open Editor, you will see new GUI editor of SSIS 2012 for Pivot which is much simpler to use than previous versions.

In the GUI Editor there are 3 types of column that should be identified from the input columns.

Table below explains the meaning of each column type in Pivot Transform: (PivotUsage column just mentioned here for those of you who is interested to know what is happening in the behind of scene of this GUI, the PivotUsage value will be set for each column as below numbers)

Name	PivotUsage(Just for more information)	Description
Pass columns	0	The column is passed through unchanged to the output.  Because many input rows can result only in one output row, the transformation copies only the first input value for the column
Set Key	1	The column acts as the key or part of the key that identifies a set of records
Pivot Key	2	The column defines the pivot. The values in this column are associated with columns in the pivoted dataset
Pivot Value	3	The column contains values that are placed in the columns that the pivot creates

In the data sample here key columns should be set in this order:

Set Key: Name

Pivot Key: OrderYear

Pivot Value: OrderQuantity

You can also get more information when you look at GUI editor for Pivot;

Set Key showed in horizontal headers and this means that there will be single row per each unique value in Set Key. for example in this sample we want to view the result like single row per each product name, so this is the reason why we put Name as Set Key.

Pivot Key showed in vertical headers and this means that there will be single column per each value in Pivot Key. for example in this sample we want to view the result like single column per each year of order (like 2005,2006...), so this is the reason why we put OrderYear as Pivot Key.

Pivot Value showed in value cell area and this means that values of this column will be shown in junction of Set Key and Pivot Key in each cell. for example values that we want to see in each cell of desired output are quantity of orders for each product name in each year, so this is the reason why we put OrderQuantity as Pivot Value.

After setting columns as above description, check the "Ignore un-matched Pivot Key values and report them after DataFlow execution" check box like screenshot below:

reason of checking this check box in this stage is that:

Pivot transform is a static pivot transform, and it needs to know exact values in Pivot Key column to generate output columns based on it. with checking this check box and executing the data flow task once, we will see unique values of Pivot Key in the execution results window and then use it for completing the Pivot GUI configuration.

Now just execute the data flow task (note that we didn't added anything after pivot transform till now).

After execution go to Progress tab, and scroll down find the line like below which has values found in the Pivot Key column:

Right click on the line above and "Copy Message Text" then stop the package and go back to Pivot GUI again,

paste copied values into the box under "Generate pivot output columns from values" like below: (Note that you just column values should be listed here with comma between values as below image shows):

Now click on "Generate Columns Now"

You will see a dialog box that shows Generate Output Columns Results based on the values that you entered earlier;

Just hit OK and you will see output columns in the "existing pivoted output columns" area as below

Now you finished configuration of Pivot GUI.

just hit OK.

We will add a Union All transform and data viewer just to show result generated by Pivot (you may use a destination like a table or other transformation from this stage based on what you want to do after pivoting data).

Add a Union All Transformation after Pivot, and add a data viewer in the data path between Pivot and Union All like below:

now execute the package to see results in data viewer, a sample screenshot of result showed here:

That's All. Now I am pretty sure you are agree with me that improvements in GUI of Pivot transform helped a lot in configuring key columns of this transform rather than  ssis 2008

Again please note that this Tutorial is for SSIS 2012, so if you want to use Pivot Transform in SSIS 2008 R2 or earlier version see our other tutorial.