Raising and Defining Events in a Custom Task

The Integration Services run-time engine provides a collection of events that provide status on the progress of a task as the task is validated and executed. The IDTSComponentEvents interface defines these events, and is provided to tasks as a parameter to the Validate and Execute methods.

There is another set of events, which are defined in the IDTSEvents interface, that are raised on behalf of the task by the TaskHost. The TaskHost raises events that occur before and after validation and execution, whereas the task raises the events that occur during execution and validation.

Creating Custom Events

Custom task developers can define new, custom events by creating a new EventInfo in their overridden implementation of the InitializeTask method. After the EventInfo is created, it is added to the EventInfos collection by using the Add method. The method signature of the Add method is as follows:

public void Add(string eventName, string description, bool allowEventHandlers, string[] parameterNames, TypeCode[] parameterTypes, string[] parameterDescriptions);

The following code sample shows the InitializeTask method of a custom task, where two custom events are created and their properties are set. The new events are then added to the EventInfos collection.

The first custom event has an eventName of "OnBeforeIncrement" and description of "Fires after the initial value is updated." The next parameter, the true value, indicates that this event should allow an event handler container to be created to handle the event. The event handler is a container that provides structure in a package and services to tasks, like other containers such as the package, Sequence, ForLoop, and ForEachLoop. When the allowEventHandlers parameter is true, DtsEventHandler objects are created for the event. Any parameters that were defined for the event are now available to the DtsEventHandler in the variables collection of the DtsEventHandler.

public override void InitializeTask(Connections connections,
   VariableDispenser variables, IDTSInfoEvents events,
   IDTSLogging log, EventInfos eventInfos,
   LogEntryInfos logEntryInfos, ObjectReferenceTracker refTracker)
{
    this.eventInfos = eventInfos;
    string[] paramNames = new string[1];
    TypeCode[] paramTypes = new TypeCode[1]{TypeCode.Int32};
    string[] paramDescriptions = new string[1];

    paramNames[0] = "InitialValue";
    paramDescriptions[0] = "The value before it is incremented.";

    this.eventInfos.Add("OnBeforeIncrement", 
      "Fires before the task increments the value.",
      true,paramNames,paramTypes,paramDescriptions);
    this.onBeforeIncrement = this.eventInfos["OnBeforeIncrement"];

    paramDescriptions[0] = "The value after it has been incremented.";
    this.eventInfos.Add("OnAfterIncrement",
      "Fires after the initial value is updated.",
      true,paramNames, paramTypes,paramDescriptions);
    this.onAfterIncrement = this.eventInfos["OnAfterIncrement"];
}

Public Overrides Sub InitializeTask(ByVal connections As Connections, _
ByVal variables As VariableDispenser, ByVal events As IDTSInfoEvents, _
ByVal log As IDTSLogging, ByVal eventInfos As EventInfos, _
ByVal logEntryInfos As LogEntryInfos, ByVal refTracker As ObjectReferenceTracker) 

    Dim paramNames(0) As String
    Dim paramTypes(0) As TypeCode = {TypeCode.Int32}
    Dim paramDescriptions(0) As String

    Me.eventInfos = eventInfos

    paramNames(0) = "InitialValue"
    paramDescriptions(0) = "The value before it is incremented."

    Me.eventInfos.Add("OnBeforeIncrement", _
      "Fires before the task increments the value.", _
      True, paramNames, paramTypes, paramDescriptions)
    Me.onBeforeIncrement = Me.eventInfos("OnBeforeIncrement")

    paramDescriptions(0) = "The value after it has been incremented."
    Me.eventInfos.Add("OnAfterIncrement", _
      "Fires after the initial value is updated.", True, _
      paramNames, paramTypes, paramDescriptions)
    Me.onAfterIncrement = Me.eventInfos("OnAfterIncrement")

End Sub

Raising Custom Events

Custom events are raised by calling the FireCustomEvent method. The following line of code raises a custom event.

componentEvents.FireCustomEvent(this.onBeforeIncrement.Name,
   this.onBeforeIncrement.Description, ref arguments,
   null, ref bFireOnBeforeIncrement);

componentEvents.FireCustomEvent(Me.onBeforeIncrement.Name, _
Me.onBeforeIncrement.Description, arguments, _
Nothing,  bFireOnBeforeIncrement)

Sample

The following example shows a task that defines a custom event in the InitializeTask method, adds the custom event to the EventInfos collection, and then raises the custom event during its Execute method by calling the FireCustomEvent method.

[DtsTask(DisplayName = "CustomEventTask")]
    public class CustomEventTask : Task
    {
        public override DTSExecResult Execute(Connections connections, 
          VariableDispenser variableDispenser, IDTSComponentEvents componentEvents,
           IDTSLogging log, object transaction)
        {
            bool fireAgain;
            object[] args = new object[1] { "The value of the parameter." };
            componentEvents.FireCustomEvent( "MyCustomEvent", 
              "Firing the custom event.", ref args,
              "CustomEventTask" , ref fireAgain );
            return DTSExecResult.Success;
        }

        public override void InitializeTask(Connections connections,
          VariableDispenser variableDispenser, IDTSInfoEvents events,
          IDTSLogging log, EventInfos eventInfos,
          LogEntryInfos logEntryInfos, ObjectReferenceTracker refTracker)
        {
            string[] names = new string[1] {"Parameter1"};
            TypeCode[] types = new TypeCode[1] {TypeCode.String};
            string[] descriptions = new string[1] {"Parameter description." };

            eventInfos.Add("MyCustomEvent",
             "Fires when my interesting event happens.",
             true, names, types, descriptions);

        }
   }

<DtsTask(DisplayName = "CustomEventTask")> _ 
    Public Class CustomEventTask
     Inherits Task
        Public Overrides Function Execute(ByVal connections As Connections, _
          ByVal variableDispenser As VariableDispenser, _
          ByVal componentEvents As IDTSComponentEvents, _
          ByVal log As IDTSLogging, ByVal transaction As Object) _
          As DTSExecResult

            Dim fireAgain As Boolean
            Dim args() As Object =  New Object(1) {"The value of the parameter."}

            componentEvents.FireCustomEvent("MyCustomEvent", _
              "Firing the custom event.", args, _
              "CustomEventTask" ,  fireAgain)
            Return DTSExecResult.Success
        End Function
 
        Public Overrides  Sub InitializeTask(ByVal connections As Connections, _
          ByVal variableDispenser As VariableDispenser,
          ByVal events As IDTSInfoEvents,
          ByVal log As IDTSLogging, ByVal eventInfos As EventInfos, ByVal logEnTryInfos As LogEnTryInfos, ByVal refTracker As ObjectReferenceTracker)

            Dim names() As String =  New String(1) {"Parameter1"}
            Dim types() As TypeCode =  New TypeCode(1) {TypeCode.String}
            Dim descriptions() As String =  New String(1) {"Parameter description."}

            eventInfos.Add("MyCustomEvent", _
              "Fires when my interesting event happens.", _
              True, names, types, descriptions)

        End Sub

    End Class

Change History

See Also

Other Resources

Integration Services Event Handlers
Creating Package Event Handlers

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance