Simplest way to constrain an SSIS Execute Process Task We have some complex SSIS packages, currently in SSIS 2005, that use Execute Process Task in order to call out to do some business logic.

Some of these called programs are not as stable as one could wish for.

What is the simplest way, therefore, to constrain the execution in time, or other metric?

For example, nine times out of ten, the program executes (correctly) in ten seconds.  If it runs more than five minutes, kill it and presume it returned an error.

Please presume that changing the programs is not an option.
Use

TimeOut

Specify the number of seconds that the process can run. A value of 0 indicates that no time-out value is used, and the process runs until it is completed or until an error occurs.

TerminateProcessAfterTimeOut

Indicate whether the process is forced to end after the time-out period specified by the TimeOut option. This option is available only if TimeOut is not 0.

more about Execute Process Task Editor (Process Page)