Expert SQL Server™ 2005 Integration Services

Introduction

Several books have been written about SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)—in fact, the prequel to this book, Professional SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (Wiley Publications, 2006), is commendable in the detail it provides on the tool. However, although many of the technology books out there are written well and are great reference guides when you're trying to accomplish something, applying the technology to a solution may not always be straightforward.

Case in point, any power tool you buy at your local hardware store comes with a user manual. However, looking through the index, it is quite apparent that the purpose of the manual is to show off the knobs and buttons of the tool. For example, if it is a power saw, it may describe how to raise and lower the saw blade, and how to angle the arm to cut a 45-degree angle. But nowhere in the documentation will you learn to build a dresser or construct a bed! Clearly, you would not expect this in a manual, especially given that the saw can be used for hundreds (if not thousands) of different purposes.

As you would expect, the case is similar for SSIS. The online documentation and the SSIS books written so far do a great job at describing how to use the FTP task, for example, to pull a file from a remote server, and how to connect to the file to then extract the data into a table. What the documentation and books don't describe, however, is how to connect the dots and apply SSIS for a specific purpose. To be sure, ...