I would use the derived column.  You can use nested Conditional operators («boolean_expression» ? «when_true» : «when_false») to populate the values you need.  For example:

(oraColumn == "Y" ? 1 : (oraColumn == "P" ? 2 : 0))

You'll...

Here's a link to SQL Server Integration Services (How Do I) on MSDN:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms166351.aspx

There are some tutorials and other intro documentation to get you started.

You can use the Package Configurations to generate a configuration file that will populate SSIS global variables with the values that are different in dev and prod.  You can then...

John, we've run into a similar problem here - we have about 70 related packages we wanted to keep together.  We threw around the idea of having separate projects/solutions...

The DT_DBTIMESTAMP data type will give you a date/time that's equivalent to SQL's datetime.