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

Chapter 6. Creating Your First Package

Creating packages in SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a bit like Lego-block programming. You drag various tasks over, configure the tasks, chain them together, and then voila, execute. Well, it's not quite that easy, but you'll find it much easier than writing any program. In this lesson, you learn how to create your first SSIS package. Granted, the package does very little here, but it shows you many of the concepts that will be critical throughout the rest of the book. Many of the concepts may not make complete sense yet when it comes to configuring various components, but no worries—the concepts are deeply covered throughout the rest of the book.

To create your first package, you need an SSIS project. Creating a project is covered extensively in Lesson 4. After you create your first project, a package called Package.dtsx is automatically created. If you want to rename this package, simply right-click the package in Solution Explorer and select Rename. Once the file is renamed to something with a .dtsx extension, you will be asked, "Do you wish to rename the package object as well?" You should always say yes to this question because failure to do so results in your package name and your file name becoming out of synch, meaning that your error logs will report that a package name is failing and you won't be able to find it.

To create a new package, you can also right-click SSIS Packages in the Solution Explorer and select New Package. ...