70-463 · Question #82
You are developing a data flow transformation to merge two data sources. One source contains product data and the other source contains data about the country in which the product was manufactured…
The correct answer is A. set the appropriate SortKeyPosition properties on the data sources. C. set the IsSorted property on both data sources. SSIS's Merge Join transformation requires sorted inputs, but it does not automatically detect sorting from an ORDER BY clause in the source SQL query. Two metadata properties must be explicitly set to inform SSIS that the data is pre-sorted: (1) IsSorted must be set to True on…
Question
You are developing a data flow transformation to merge two data sources. One source contains product data and the other source contains data about the country in which the product was manufactured. Both data sources contain a two-character CountryCode column and both use SQL Server. Both data sources contain an ORDER BY clause to sort the data by the CountryCode column in ascending order. You use a Merge Join transformation to join the data. You need to ensure that the Merge Join transformation works correctly without additional transformations. What should you do? (Each answer presents a part of the solution. Choose all that apply.)
Exhibit
Options
- Aset the appropriate SortKeyPosition properties on the data sources.
- Bset the ValidateExternalMetaData property on the Merge Join transformation to True.
- Cset the IsSorted property on both data sources.
- DSet the MaxBuffersPerlnput property on the Merge Join transformation to 2.
How the community answered
(56 responses)- A79% (44)
- B7% (4)
- D14% (8)
Explanation
SSIS's Merge Join transformation requires sorted inputs, but it does not automatically detect sorting from an ORDER BY clause in the source SQL query. Two metadata properties must be explicitly set to inform SSIS that the data is pre-sorted: (1) IsSorted must be set to True on each data source's output - this tells SSIS the output is already in sorted order and no Sort transformation is needed; (2) SortKeyPosition must be set on the relevant output columns - this identifies which columns are the sort keys and their sort direction/priority. Together these two settings allow Merge Join to process the inputs correctly. Option B (ValidateExternalMetaData = True) validates that column definitions match external schema metadata and has no effect on sort behavior. Option D (MaxBuffersPerInput) is a memory tuning property that does not affect correctness of the merge operation.
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