UPDATE: recent builds of SSDT for VS 2017 can break TFS integration. Read more about it in the blog post SQL Server Data Tools 2017 and TFS Integration.

Finally, months after the release of SSAS and SSRS projects for VS 2017, we have the ability to create SSIS projects in VS 2017. The title is a bit misleading, because we could already create SSIS 2017 projects using the latest version of SSDT for Visual Studio 2015:

However, if you wanted to use Visual Studio 2017 you had to wait till today (August 23, 2017). There are several reasons why you want to use VS 2017 over VS 2015:

• You are one of the cool kids and you use only the latest Visual Studio
• There’s no TFS Explorer plug-in available for Visual Studio 2015. If you want to install SQL Server Data Tools only (thus without the full-blown Visual Studio), and you wanted TFS integration, you couldn’t use VS 2015. Unless you installed VS 2015 Community Edition (which has its own license issues).
• You have a brand new laptop and you don’t want to install multiple versions of Visual Studio (the situation I’m currently in).

So, where do we get the good stuff? Unlike SSAS and SSRS, you cannot install SSIS as an extension yet.

For the moment, you have to download the full SQL Server Data Tools installer for Visual Studio 2017 (15.3). The installer will ask you how you want to install the BI templates:

Yes, you can install a new instance is well (that’s what everybody is waiting for, even more instances of Visual Studio on their machine). Anyway, there are two things you have to do to make sure the installation works:

• Update Visual Studio 2017 to version 15.3, if you haven’t already
• Uninstall the SSAS & SSRS extensions if you had them installed.

If you try to install SSIS alongside the extensions, you’ll be greeted with this fine error (super clear as usual):

So it’s uninstall existing BI templates, install new ones. When the set-up is done, you can develop SSIS 2017 projects in Visual Studio 2017. Why did we have to wait so long? Apparently VS 2017 is a bit different than its predecessors, which meant more work for the SSIS team. Well, I’m happy it’s finally here.