Expert SQL Server™ 2005 Integration Services

8.1. Working with a Team in SSIS

As you can imagine, in most companies, there isn't just a single person developing SSIS packages for a single project. Generally, for most medium and large companies, there would be a few people developing the project's ETL, and they would need to collaborate on the solution. Because of this, source control becomes mandatory for keeping one developer from coding on a package that another developer is already working on. Another tactic is to break large packages into smaller, more modular packages to allow for multiple components to be worked on at the same time. Additionally, package templates can create consistency between the developers.

8.1.1. Source Control Integration

A key ingredient to a stable development environment is going to be source control. Source control ensures that only a single developer can work on a package at any given point in time, and, if a problem occurs, you can roll back code to a previous version. The great thing about the SSIS development environment in BIDS is that it can take advantage of the Visual Studio 2005 source-control integration. One of the most popular source control systems is Visual Source Safe (VSS). In this section, you'll see how easy it is to integrate your SSIS project into Source Safe 2005. You can also use Visual Studio Team Systems, a concept that is covered in the book Professional SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (Wiley Publications, 2006).

First, however, a word of caution about source ...