SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)

Overview
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a tool that we use to perform ETL operations; i.e. extract, transform and load data. While ETL processing is common in data warehousing (DW) applications, SSIS is by no means limited to just DW; e.g. when you create a Maintenance Plan using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) an SSIS package is created. At a high level, SSIS provides the ability to:

• retrieve data from just about any source
• perform various transformations on the data; e.g. convert from one type to another, convert to uppercase or lowercase, perform calculations, etc.
• load data into just about any source
• define a workflow

The first version of SSIS was released with SQL Server 2005. SSIS is a replacement for Data Transformation Services (DTS) which was available with SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 2000. SSIS builds on the capabilities introduced with DTS.

Our high level outline is as follows:

• Creating SSIS packages with SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
• Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS)
• Creating a simple SSIS package in BIDS
• Deploying SSIS packages
• Executing SSIS packages