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Using Integration Services without GUI?

  • December 30, 2010 at 12:59 pm

    #1267910

    If I understand your question..

    There really is no way to edit a package outside the GUI. You can try notepad or any XML editor but I can almost guarantee pain, and lots of it.

    It is possible to edit a package programatically but this requires even more knowledge than using the GUI..

    The learning curve for SSIS feels pretty high, however, once you get it..

    You were talking about changing databases, this is really easy. However if field names change in a dataflow that could be a problem, the metadata about field names are set at design time.. I believe CozyROC has a tool DataFlow Plus (I think) that might do it.

    I looked at that SSIS rant page and disagreed with most of his complaints and partially agreed with some of the other people's complaints. Many of his complaints seem to step from either misunderstandings or outright unwillingness to research the solution.

    Long story short, I have yet to see any other homegrown ETL tool written in .net or other language outperform SSIS in throughput. could it happen, sure, is it likely, nope..

    CEWII

  • December 30, 2010 at 1:06 pm

    #1267918

    Thanks, that was very helpful (maybe I just needed a third person to say the same exact thing a different way).

    The major reason column names and so on change is due to the fact we start off with a common metamodel for all clients, but invariably they want customizations. Usually, a baseline difference might be the metadata on a column besides the name, such as the length of a text string. I think this is a legitimate business requirement, but I realize most people don't probably have to deal with this requirement.

    Using our old way, we can write reports on our ETL scripts that tell us who is loading what, and what do they refer to it as... (This is far from perfect, since it is home-grown and not a polished wooden knob to some $100,000 home audio speaker.)

    Basically, lately I've been revisiting my hatred of SSIS and trying to discard my prejudices and give it another shot.

  • December 30, 2010 at 1:09 pm

    #1267919

    Long story short, I have yet to see any other homegrown ETL tool written in .net or other language outperform SSIS in throughput.

    ... that will be provided free of charge. (just to add a rather important fact fro my point of view).

    At the beginnig I had my hard times with SSIS, too (who didn't)? But once I started using it and did see the success (step by step), I started to like it the way it is.


    Lutz
    A pessimist is an optimist with experience.

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  • January 3, 2011 at 3:41 am

    #1268396

    LutzM (12/30/2010)

    At the beginnig I had my hard times with SSIS, too (who didn't)?

    I didn't 🙂

    I liked SSIS right from the start (except of course those crappy SQL editors and the one-line derived column editor). But then again, I'm not a .NET developer. 🙂

    Need an answer? No, you need a question
    My blog at https://sqlkover.com.
    MCSE Business Intelligence - Microsoft Data Platform MVP

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