Using the Azure Data Lake Storage Source Component

The Azure Data Lake Storage Source component is an SSIS data flow pipeline component that can be used to read/retrieve data from Azure Data Lake Storage.

The component includes the following two pages to configure how you want to read data from Azure Data Lake Storage.

  • General
  • Columns

General

The General page of the Azure Data Lake Storage Source Component allows you to specify the general settings of the component.

Azure Data Lake Storage Source Editor

Source Item Settings
Connection Manager

The Azure Data Lake Storage Source Component requires an Azure Data Lake Storage connection in order to connect with Azure Data Lake Storage. The Connection Manager drop-down will show a list of all Azure Data Lake Storage connection managers that are available to your current SSIS package.

Source Item Path

The Source Item Path specifies the base item to point to for retrieval. Click the ellipsis button ('...') to open up an Azure Data Lake Storage browser dialog to select an item.

Item Selection Mode

The Item Selection Mode specifies what Azure Data Lake Storage item(s) will get selected. The Files Only modifier will still go through folders to retrieve items but will not return any records for the folders.

  • Selected Item: Retrieves only the item specified by Source Item Path.
  • Selected Level: Retrieves the selected item and all immediate files and folders under the path specified by the Source Item Path option.
  • Selected Level (Files only): Retrieves the selected item and all immediate files under the folder as specified by the Source Item Path option.
  • Recursive: Retrieves the selected item (specified by the Source Item Path option) and all sub-items recursively.
  • Recursive (Files only): Retrieves items the same as the Recursive mode but only returns files.
Page Size

The Page Size lets you specify how many records to retrieve per service call to Azure Data Lake. The default is set to 1000.

Refresh Component Button

Clicking the Refresh Component button causes the component to retrieve the latest metadata and update each field to its most recent metadata.

Expression fx Button

Clicking the fx button to launch the SSIS Expression Editor to enable dynamic update of the property at run time.

Generate Documentation Button

Clicking the Generate Documentation button to generate a Word document that describes the component's metadata including relevant mapping, and so on.

Columns

The Columns page of the Azure Data Lake Storage Source Component shows you all available attributes from the object that you specified on the General page.

Azure Data Lake Storage Source Editor

On the top left of the grid, you can see a checkbox, which can be used to toggle the selection of all available Azure Data Lake Storage fields. This is a productive way to check or uncheck all available fields.

The Columns page grid consists of:

  • Azure Data Lake Storage Field: Column that will be retrieved from the current item (file or folder).
  • Data Type: The data type of this field.

Note: As a general best practice, you should only select the Azure Data Lake Storage fields that are needed for the downstream pipeline components.