SSIS

When working in the SSIS data flow, you’ll notice that many sources and transformations and some destinations have a built-in output to handle errors. The error output allows the SSIS developer to create a separate path through which error rows can be directed. In this SSIS Basics post, we’ll briefly discuss the essentials and design patterns for using SSIS error…

Data exploration is an essential piece of any new ETL (extraction-transformation-load) process. Knowing the structure, type, and even the semantics of data sources can help the ETL developer or architect to make better decisions on data type and length settings, transformation logic, and error handling procedures. Additionally, there are situations in which the exploration of the data is the principal…

In SQL Server Integration Services, connection managers are used as gateways for most any external read and write operation. Connection managers are type- and format-specific, and in the case of relational database connection managers, they are usually specific to vendor (Oracle, DB2, etc.) as well. In most use cases, the same connection will be used across multiple packages in the…

SQL Server Integration Services is equipped with tasks and containers to make it easy to design and maintain the flow of ETL: which logic should be executed, when should it be executed, and how many times should it occur. Most SSIS developers are familiar with the sequence container and the For Each Loop container, which can be used to group…

In SQL Server Integration Services, the lookup component is one of the most frequently used tools for data validation and completion. The lookup component is provided as a means to virtually join one set of data to another to validate and/or retrieve missing values. Properly configured, it is reliable and reasonably fast. To get the most out of this component,…

SQL Server Integration Services does a great job of retrieving and processing data on the fly, directly in the data flow pipeline. However, there are circumstances that occasionally require the persistence of result sets in SSIS for use during package execution. For these such cases, one option is to use SSIS raw files. In this SSIS Basics post, I will…

In the control flow for SQL Server Integration Services, the “lines” we commonly use to connect tasks to each other are actually smart controls. These SSIS precedence constraints allow the ETL developer to customize the program flow from one task to another. The most common use of precedence constraints is to simply connect two tasks with the default constraint, which…