Knight's 24-Hour Trainer: Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Integration Services

Chapter 5. Exploring Business Intelligence Development Studio

Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) is a Visual Studio 2008 tool that helps you create, debug, and execute SSIS packages. When you're a business intelligence developer, it can also help you create reports in SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) or design cubes in SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS). You'll be using BIDS extensively throughout this book, so it's important that in this lesson, you learn everything you need to know to make your life easier in this critical environment.

Because this is a more exploratory, introductory lesson, it doesn't have a task-based tutorial as the other lessons have.

You can open BIDS through the SQL Server 2008 program group. Depending on your PC, BIDS may take some time to open.

One hint that you can use to reduce your load time is to eliminate the splash screen. To eliminate the BIDS splash screen and reduce your load time by a few seconds each time, right-click the BIDS shortcut and select Properties. Next, add the switch -NOSPLASH at the end of the shortcut as shown here:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" -NOSPLASH

The Solution Explorer

Once you create your project from Lesson 4, you're ready to begin exploration of the environment. The most important pane, the Solution Explorer, is on the right. The Solution Explorer is where you can find all of your created SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages, data sources, data source views, ...