This book is written by Andy Leonard, Matt Masson, Tim Mitchell, Jessica Moss, and Michelle Ufford. These are all highly talented people we are talking about. Andy is constantly teaching SSIS patterns in his training classes and articles. Matt, for me, is the face of SSIS team at Microsoft. Same goes to other authors, they are common appearances in forums and community events helping people learn SSIS.

Within a few hours of reading SQL Server 2012 Integration Services Design Patterns, it stood out that none of the authors were trying to impress by showing what they all know in SSIS. Instead, they focused on describing solutions and patterns in a great detail (exactly why i paid for).

Each chapter is a collection of solutions and best practices to common data integration problems. For loading flat files go to chapter 7, for data warehouse patterns go to chapter 11. Each solution is written in detail with lots of pictures and step by step instructions. You could have the book open at work and follow through each step to solve a problem without running into any issues.

There is also pages and pages of code that you could immediately use. You’ll learn frameworks and metadata driven execution patterns. I didn’t find a companion cd or website from where you can simply copy and paste this code. That leaves you with having to type-in; a little depressing.

It is fun to read as well. I smiled when page 30 said VCR play button (referring to the debug button).Literature in the book is plain, clear, and casually written. It was like reading a blog post - simple and refreshing.

If you’re on a mission to learn everything about SSIS, I wouldn’t recommend this to you. This isn’t a know-all-SSIS book. Authors didn’t hide this fact either. Cover of the book says “Improve your efficiency as a data integration developer”. This focuses on patterns to data integration problems. If your job involves moving data using SSIS, this is a must have. SSIS 2012 Design Patterns teaches building faster, efficient, and reusable packages for your data integration needs.

I’m @SamuelVanga on Twitter.