Expert SQL Server™ 2005 Integration Services

8.4. Package Configuration

Now that you have your set of packages complete, the challenge is trying to migrate them to your testing environment or to production without having to manually configure it for that environment. For example, your production server may not have the same directory to load extract files from, or the same user name to use to connect to the database. Configuration files help you make the migrations seamless and the configuration automated to reduce your risk of errors. In this section and the next, you'll see two different methods for configuration. One is to create a configuration repository and the other is to create your own repository, which mimics configuration files, but gives you more flexibility.

8.4.1. SSIS Package Configurations

The SSIS Package Configuration option enables you to write any SSIS property for the package, connection, container, variable, or any task into an XML file or a table, for example, and then read the setting at runtime. You could deploy the configuration file to multiple servers and point the setting inside the file to a new SQL Server database on the second server, and when the package runs, it will shift its connection to the new database automatically. Configuration files will also come in handy later when you deploy the packages to production using the deployment utility. Because they're just XML files, you can compare them with your favorite comparison tool such as VSS to determine what settings are different between ...