Import negative numbers with SSIS 2005

Question

I'm importing a flat txt file into SQL Server 2005 using SSIS. The problem is that negative numbers between -1 and 0 in the txt file are in a format without leading zero, e.g.:

-.15

If I insert such number into my database using plain INSERT syntax it works without complaining. However, SSIS reports an error if it encounter such number. If I change the number in txt file to:

-0.15

SSIS works correctly. Is this a known problem and is there any way to solve it without changing the values in the source txt file?

Answer 1

What is the data type on the flat file source side and what is the data type on the destination side? Have you tried using an explicit data conversion step? It sounds like an implicit conversion is occurring and it isn't working correctly, so explicitly setting the types may resolve the problem.