Introduction

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is now in its third and largest evolution since its invention. It has gone from a side-note feature of SQL Server to a major player in the Extract Transform Load (ETL) market. With that evolution comes an evolving user base to the product. What once was a DBA feature has now grown to be used by SQL Server developers and casual users that may not even know they're using the product.

The best thing about SSIS is its price tag: free with your SQL Server purchase. Many ETL vendors charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for what you will see in this book. SSIS is also a great platform for you to expand and integrate into, which many ETL vendors do not offer. Once you get past the initial learning curve, you'll be amazed with the power of the tool, and it can take weeks off your time to market.

Who This Book Is For

Having used SSIS for years through its evolution, the idea of writing this book was quite compelling. If you've used DTS in the past, I'm afraid you'll have to throw out your old knowledge and start nearly anew. Very little from the original DTS was kept in this release. Microsoft has spent the five years between releases making the SSIS environment a completely new enterprise-strength ETL tool. So, if you considered yourself pretty well-versed in DTS, you're now back to square one.

This book is intended for developers, DBAs, and casual users who hope to use SSIS for transforming data, creating a workflow, or maintaining their SQL Server. This book is a professional book, meaning that the authors assume that you know the basics of how to query a SQL Server and have some rudimentary programming skills. Not much programming skills will be needed or assumed, but it will help with your advancement. No skills in the prior release of SSIS (called DTS then) are required, but we do reference it throughout the book when we call attention to feature enhancements.