How to Debug a variable flow and watch the variable as it passes through different tasks in SSIS?

Problem: How to Debug a variable flow and watch the variable as it passes through different tasks in SSIS?

Solution:   Debugging Control Flow

In a troubleshooting process of SSIS packages to know what it’s compiling and run time values of variable we need to set break points on the specific tasks to watch the variable at the time of entry and out of the task.

When you launch SSIS, in the designer you can see or enable break points by right click anywhere in the design area. Or you can go to the designer tab and navigate through the windows to get to the break points and Add a new break point from there. Another quick way of watching the breakpoints from the designer is to press(CTRL+ALT+B).

you can enable a break point on the component level or task level. So, what happens in when you add a break point on the task there are few conditions we can choose to break depending on the selection it will pause executing when that condition hits and gives you time to watch the variable at that moment it entered the task by stepping inside the break point.

After we enable the break point on the task or component the designer will show a red dot on the task or component to indicate where the break point is set.

Below is the list of options you get when you want to break on the task.

Example:

In the example, I would like to show we can watch a variable inside of for loop each time it executes the variable tries to increment so it is something changes during run time.

To create a for loop please go through this article. for loop

Step 0: Add Break point on the for loop at the component and select pre execute and loop execution as below image.

Select options for breaking the task.

After adding break point you should be seeing a red dot on the container like below.

Step 1: Change the solution configuration to debug and then execute task or package.

Step 2: you should see the package stops executing on the for loop container as soon as hits the pre execution and open the break points options whether to watch or continue

Step 3: open the watch window and select the variable to watch and expand the arrow to watch values for each execution hit continue to see until it exits the loop.

Output:

As you can see the variables value is watched inside the watch window.