This has been discussed in stackoverflow before but I couldn't find a case/answer that might apply to my situation:
From time to time I have raw data in text to be imported into SQL, for almost every case I must try out several times as SSIS wizard doesn't know what's the max size of each field and the default is 50 characters. Only after it fails I can know from the error message which (first) field was truncated and I then increase the field's size.
There might be more than one field that needs getting its size increased, and the SSIS wizard only gives one error each time it encounters a truncate, as you can see this is very tedious, I want to find a way to have a quick inspect to the data first to determine the max size of each field.
I came across an old post on stackoverflow: Here is the post
Unfortunately it might not work on my case: my raw data could have as many rows as 10 Million (yes, in one single text file which is over GB).
I am kind of do not think there would be a way to get that, but just still want to post my question here hoping to get some clue.
Thank you very much.