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

Chapter 12. Using the FTP Task

The FTP Task works very similarly to any FTP utility. It allows you to send and receive files from an FTP location along with other FTP commands. The FTP Task comes in handy when you need to move files from an FTP server to your environment for processing or when you need to send a file to an FTP server. A common example is sending an extract file created in a Data Flow or receiving a flat file to be processed by a Data Flow and inserted into a table in your server.

Double-click on the FTP Task to open the task editor. The first screen of the FTP Task Editor shows the General node with some basic properties of the task. Under the General node you see the name and description of the FTP Task. These do not affect the FTP Task; they are used for ease of reference when viewing the tasks in the Control Flow. The name shows on the tasks in the Control Flow, and the description is usually a longer line of text describing the purpose of the FTP Task. It is a best practice to always change the values of these fields to values that make it easy to for anyone to see and understand the function of the task.

The General node also has two other properties: FTP Connection and Stop on Failure. The FTP Connection is the connection to the FTP server that must exist in the connection manager. You can create this FTP connection either by clicking the drop-down menu next to the FTP Connection field and selecting <New Connection...> or by right-clicking in the connection ...