Watching variables in SSIS during debug

Question

I have a project in SSIS and I've added an Execute SQL Task which sends its result out to a variable. I wanted to confirm the value because I was worried that it would try to write it out as a resultset object rather than an actual integer (in this case I'm returning a COUNT).

My first thought was just to run it in debug mode and add the global variable to my Watch window. Unfortunately, when I right-click on the Watch window, the option to "Add Variable" is greyed out. What am I missing here?

I've gotten around confirming that my variable is set correctly, so I'm not interested in methods like putting a script in to do a MsgBox with the value or anything like that. For future reference I'd like to be able to watch variables in debug mode. If there are some kind of constraints on that then I'd like to know the what and why of it all if anyone knows.

The help is woefully inadequate on this one and every "tutorial" that I can find just says, "Add the variable to the Watch window and debug" as though there should never be a problem doing that.

Thanks for any insight!

Answer 1

I believe you can only add variables to the Watch window while the debugger is stopped on a breakpoint. If you set a breakpoint on a step, you should be able to enter variables into the Watch window when the breakpoint is hit. You can select the first empty row in the Watch window and enter the variable name (you may or may not get some Intellisense there, I can't remember how well that works.)

Answer 2

Thanks for this post. I was able to add Variable during the debug mode