How can I better visualize the path that a value takes through an SSIS Data Flow and the operations that are performed upon it?

Question

I find that I regularly need to track a value through an SSIS Data Flow. The process that I use to do this is manual and time consuming. Are there any techniques or tools that I can use to reduce the effort (and potential for error)?

What I really need is a means of quickly identifying the data flow components that modify the values in a specific field and ideally the expressions within which it is referenced. I frequently get questions like 'Where did this value in the database come from?'. I would like to be able to answer with something like the following...

'The origin of this value is this field in this other database. It flows from the source to the destination through this data flow. Along the way, it is incremented here, negated there and concatenated with this other field there.'

Answer 1

You can use what's called a data viewer: How To Add a Data Viewer. It shows you the outputted data that is created after each transformation component.

Answer 2

This is just a random thought, but as SSIS package files are just xml documents, couldn't you search the document for the fieldname you are interested in and find all the references to it that way?