Conditional split error message

Getting the below error msg on my conditional split. I changed the error output to ignore errors and that keeps the error msg from appearing (and everything seems to work normally), but why would it evaluate to NULL?

Thanks

[Conditional Split - Find rows with balances [3412]] Error: The expression "FINDSTRING(Column0,"OPENING",1) > 0 || FINDSTRING(Column0,"CLOSING",1) > 0" on "output "Balance Rows" (3415)" evaluated to NULL, but the "component "Conditional Split - Find rows with balances" (3412)" requires a Boolean results. Modify the error row disposition on the output to treat this result as False (Ignore Failure) or to redirect this row to the error output (Redirect Row). The expression results must be Boolean for a Conditional Split. A NULL expression result is an error.

Can Column0 be NULL?|||

I honestly don't know how.

The data file has between 4 and 6 rows on any given day - 4 of those rows always have "CLOSING" or "OPENING" in them.

So the conditional split should ignore the other rows, right?

That's why I don't understand why it's finding a null?

|||Try this expression:

FINDSTRING((ISNULL(Column0) ? "" : Column0),"OPENING",1) > 0 || FINDSTRING((ISNULL(Column0) ? "" : Column0),"CLOSING",1) > 0|||The problem may be that when evaluating Column0, some of the columns are NULL, and hence when the conditional split tries to evaluate the statement I provided to you a few days ago, it may fail. Using the new statement I just posted, we "trap" the fact that if the column is NULL, we set its contents to "" and continue on with the FINDSTRING statement.|||

So it's throwing the "NULL" error if finds any null columns (regardless of whether the row has OPENING or CLOSING in it, because it has to evaluate ALL rows?)

Such as, for example:

1234, ,1234 intstead of 1234," ",1234 ?

Is the first case above considered a null?

(Although I looked through my file, and I do not see any null fields at all)

|||Well, yes, that'd be true. ALL rows pass through the conditional split. The output path that gets chosen depends on which condition evaluates to true.|||

So to answer the other question,

a blank between file delimiters is considered a null value to ssis?

Such as 1234, ,1234 ?

I want to clarify this because it's got me concerned, as this situation is also causing problems with another file where it can't convert a value "without loss of data", because a numeric field is blank.

I was told to convert the value to string first, then convert it back to a numeric. Is this considered a best practice for working with numeric values?

Thanks

|||

Yes, it will be trated as NULL if your Flat File Source is configured to parse it that way. There is the property on the source adapter to control that.

It is not best the practice to convert numeric data to strings and back, but you need to make sure your numeric data is really numeric. NULLs should be fine if you can handle them downstream. It looks like your conditional split was not prepared for them.

Thanks,

~Bob