SSIS script component question - no output columns defined, but I do get output

Question

Hi everyone,

I have an SSIS package that runs a script component as one step in a series that transforms data from a flat file to a SQL table. The script component itself is pretty straightforward, but I had a question about its input and output columns.

As you can see from this image the script appears to have no output columns defined (there are a number of input columns, of course.) Yet when I run the SSIS package, data comes out of this script component -- it's then used as input for a data conversion component, and from there pushed into a SQL table.

Is there a default setting I'm not aware of, where a script component with no defined output columns defaults to using the input columns? Thanks for helping me clear this up.

Answer 1

The OUTPUT Columns section is for defining columns that you are adding to the output after the script completes. In other words, if you are taking several values from the data flow in and based upon their values, calculating a new value to be output in a new column, then that would be defined in the script as an output. Otherwise, the buffer that is input into the script task is output out of the script task.