The Building Blocks of Integration Services

At its heart, Integration Services (IS) is a collection of components or objects. It is sometimes called an object model, but that can be confusing. It's helpful to just think of IS as a bunch of components with defined relationships between them and each of the components playing a role. Arguably, the most important component in IS is the package.

Almost everything you do in Integrations Services happens in or is related to the package because it is the fundamental organizing unit in IS. So, it's important that you understand the package and the components that make up a package. Tasks are another key component because they are the verbs of IS. Without tasks, your packages wouldn't do anything. Other important components in IS include connection managers, log providers, containers, precedence constraints, variables, transforms, and adapters. This chapter discusses the roles each of these components plays and how each interacts with the others. This chapter provides a high-level view, whereas later chapters cover these objects in more detail.