SSIS Package (Data Flow) Validation Time Going Exponential

I am using SSIS to populate a star schema.

The issue is in the data flow for loading and setting the Fact table dimension keys (the dimensions are all loaded fine). After 16 rather pedestrian Lookup Transformations, I have an escalating problem adding additional Lookup transforms to the Data Flow. The problem is not in execution; the problem is adding more transforms in design mode.

Lookup # Fields in Data Flow Time to validate that lookup
<17 47 Sub-second
17 48 2 sec
18 49 4 sec
19 50 8 sec
20 51 16 sec
21 52 32 sec
22 53 64 sec

While I€™m intrigued by the mathematical progression that is forming here, the issue is that I have at least 6 more Lookups to perform. I hope you can see my dilemma.

I have gone to where it takes a little over 4 minutes each to validate the lookup transform and its associated Derived Column transform and Union transform (Total 12 Minutes). Not only does this add up to many idle minutes to each design step, BUT it breaks the debugger as it pre-validates the ENTIRE data flow before it ever switches into debugging mode.

Some notes:
1. It doesn€™t matter what order the Lookup transforms occur in, the timings are exactly the same.
2. I tried many Data Flow execution optimizations, but they don€™t improve the validation times (or even get a chance to improve the execution times!)


I realize this may be somewhat of a unique problem.



Thanks for any help you are able to lend.



-Dave