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

Chapter 31. Using Sequence Containers to Organize a Package

Sequence Containers provide a simple and easy method for organizing the flow of a package and can help you divide a package into more manageable pieces. When you first begin exploring the Sequence Container, you may think organization is the only benefit it provides. However, to the creative developer this container's uses go far beyond simple cleanliness. If you know how to use it, it can also grant you the following capabilities:

• Group tasks so that you can disable a part of the package that's temporarily not needed

• Narrow the scope of a variable to just the container

• Collapse and expand the container to hide the tasks within

• Manage the properties of multiple tasks in one step by setting the properties of the container

• Use one method to ensure that multiple tasks have to execute successfully before the next task executes

• Create a transaction across a series of data-related tasks, but not on the entire package

• Create event handlers on a single container so that you can send an email if anything inside one container fails and perhaps even page yourself if anything else fails (event handlers are discussed in more detail in Lesson 38)

To add a Sequence Container to a package, drag and drop the Sequence Container in the design pane just like you would any other task. To have a task as part of the container, just drag the task within the outlined box.

Once tasks have been placed inside the Sequence Container, they can be connected by ...