Chapter 5. The Business Intelligence Development Studio


In This Chapter

  • Getting Started

  • The Integration Services Options

  • Visual Studio Standard Options

"PEOPLE ARE GOING TO BE BLOWN AWAY BY THIS!"

ALLAN MITCHELL

This chapter is an in-depth exploration of the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS). Although those familiar with Visual Studio will feel at home in BIDS, this chapter covers the Integration Servicesspecific features in detail and should be helpful for those who have never used Visual Studio as well as old pros.

The Business Intelligence Development Studio, generically known as the designer or BIDS for short, is a full-featured development environment for building business intelligence solutions. It is built on the mature Visual Studio infrastructure that provides a powerful, flexible, and easy-to-learn environment for Integration Services, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, Visual C++, Visual Basic, and other products, making it possible to truly build and maintain all your business intelligence solutions in one development environment.

Tip

This chapter is best read while in front of the computer so you can follow along, trying the different settings as they are explained.


The designer is a complex piece of software with many options and features that cannot be covered in complete detail here. However, this chapter attempts to cover those settings, features, and options that you're most likely to use when building Integration Services solutions. On occasion, some features are covered that are right next to others that aren't mentioned at all. Also, many of the user interface elements are merely touched upon because they are covered in more detail in other parts of the book. It might not be clear to you how to use all the features you'll discover in this chapter or even what the features do. But, that's OK for now. At least you'll know where to find them later.

If you are already familiar with Visual Studio, this chapter assists you in quickly getting acquainted with the SSIS-specific features. If you're unfamiliar with the Visual Studio environment, this chapter is a good introduction to how to get around, but is not a general Visual Studio introduction. A lot of Visual Studio content is available that might be helpful to you and can be found in Books Online with simple searches or in other references more focused on Visual Studio.

This chapter is basically a meandering walk through the designer, a tour if you will. Even though it comes fairly early in the book, the features are not explained in detail here. The idea is to cover the basic designer elements so you can get acquainted with the environment quickly while also describing some of the more esoteric and hard-to-find features. By the time you're finished with this chapter, you should feel comfortable in the Visual Studio environment and have a good idea how to navigate to the Integration Services features, even if you don't fully understand what they do yet. You should read through this chapter quickly when you first start learning Integration Services. Later, when you have more experience with the product, revisit this chapter to pick up the pieces you don't catch the first time around.

Note

Examples in this chapter assume you have installed the AdventureWorks sample database. If you haven't installed it yet, please see Chapter 2, "Setting Up Integration Services."




Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services
ISBN: 0672327813
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 200
Authors: Kirk Haselden

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