Creating a Custom Task in SSIS 2012 – Getting Started

For background and introduction, see Creating a Custom Task in SSIS 2012 – the Rambling Introduction.

Opening  Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop

I can hear you thinking, “Hold a minute, Andy. Do you propose to start by telling us how to open Visual Studio?” Yes. Yes, I do. Why? I’m glad you asked. This is one the tricksy things that real software developers do not remember to tell you (see Rambling Introduction…). They are not intentionally leaving stuff out to trip you, nor are they bad people; they simply do not remember making changes to their development environments to support his kind of development.

When you open Visual Studio, right-click the VS Express for Desktop tile and then click the “Run as administrator” button at the bottom of the screen:

Figure 1: Run VS Express for Desktop as Administrator

You do not have to take this step. But if you do, it will save you time and effort later. Trust me.

When you click Run VS Express for Desktop as Administrator, you will be prompted to confirm you wish to run Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop:

Figure 2: Confirm you Really Want to Run VS Express for Desktop as Administrator

Once the VS Integrated Development Environment (IDE) opens, click the New Project link to begin a new project:

Figure 3: Start a New Project

When the New Project window displays, select a Class Library project type in the .Net language of your choosing and give the project a name. I chose Visual Basic for the language and named the project MyFirstTask:

Figure 4: Selecting a Project Type and Name

The next step is renaming the default class that was created as Class1. In Solution Explorer, click on the Class1.vb class twice (slowly) and Class1 will enter rename-edit mode. Change the name to MyFirstTask as shown in Figure 5:

Figure 5: Renaming Class1 to MyFirstTask

When you hit the Enter key you will be prompted to change all references to Class1 to MyFirstTask. Click the Yes button:

Figure 6: Rename All References

 Conclusion

These are the first steps to creating a custom SSIS 2012 task using Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop. NOTE: You must remember to always start Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop as an Administrator.

Click here to get the code representing the steps completed to date.