Hands-On Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 Integration Services

Data Flow Sources

While building a data flow for a package using BIDS, your first objective is to bring the data inside the Integration Services data flow so that you can then modify the data using data flow transformations. Data flow sources are designed to bring data from the external sources into the Integration Services data flow. A data flow source reads the external data source, such as a flat file or a table in relational database, and brings in the data to the SSIS data flow by passing this data through the output columns on to the downstream component, usually a data flow transformation. During design time, the data flow source may keep a snapshot of the metadata of external columns and can refer to it at run-time. If the data in certain ...