Everyone once in a while I’ll run across a requirement for me to generate a bunch of junk data for the sole purpose of performance testing or benchmarking. There are plenty of ways that I could generate my test data, including clever TSQL scripts or a Data Flow Script Component as a source. And those methods work well, but are somewhat limited if I need to generate unicode string data for testing. But that’s where Task Factory comes in.

Included in the latest release of Task Factory is the Placeholder Source. The beauty of the Place Holder Source is that I can quickly and easily generate test data for my package.

Here you can see the editor for the Placeholder Source. On the Component Properties tab, I can specify how many rows of junk data I’d like to generate. The default is 10,000 rows, but I can set it to whatever I like. I’ve tested the source component with 100 million records before with no problem.

On the Input and Output Properties tab is where you specify which columns and data types you’d like to include in your junk data.

By default, the Placeholder Source creates 5 output columns of various data type, but you can add more fields of whatever data type you like. Just click Add Column and then select the data type you want. Here I’ve added an additional column and selected Integer as the data type.

All that’s left to do is wire up my package and click execute. Instantly tons of junk data is created for us to test or play with. If you’re interested in expanding your SSIS arsenal, head over to PragmaticWorks.com and download Task Factory. The best part is that Task Factory is free to download. A license is only required to run the Task Factory components remotely. So why not check it out?