Creating Connection Managers

Connection managers can be created in a variety of ways. The most common way is perhaps through the Connection Managers window in the designer below the Control and Data Flow windows. If you right-click on the Connection Managers window, a context menu opens with a few menu options for creating some of the more common connection managers. If you want to create a connection manager type that isn't listed on the context menu, select New Connection, which opens the Add SSIS Connection Manager dialog box shown in Figure 10.1.

Figure 10.1. Use the Add SSIS Connection Manager dialog box for creating a new connection manager

Connection managers can also be created in the various editors for components. For example, the WMI Data Reader Task Editor (shown in Figure 10.2) has the option to create a new WMI Connection Manager in the Connection Manager selections. This is a common way to create connection managers for those components that need them and vastly simplifies package creation because you can configure tasks and other components all in the same location, on the task or component editor.

Figure 10.2. Creating a new WMI Connection Manager from the WMI Data Reader Task Editor dialog box

Also, many components provide a button for creating a new connection manager. Figure 10.3 shows the button for this purpose in the OLEDB Source Editor.

Figure 10.3. Some components have a button for creating new connection managers