Chapter 4

Creating a Solution and Project

You cannot create an SSIS package in SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) without first having a solution and project. Additionally, for execution of the package in debug mode, which you use when troubleshooting, your package must be in a project and solution. Projects and solutions are containers for your packages that help you keep every component together and make you a more efficient SSIS developer.

SSDT is the program in which you’re going to develop your SSIS packages. In SQL Server 2012, SSDT is a Visual Studio 2010 shell. You can either open SSDT by itself under the SQL Server 2012 program group or open it by opening the full Visual Studio 2012 program.

An SSIS project is a container of one or more packages and other SSIS components. All the Visual Studio suite of products use the project construct to hold their files. For example, Reporting Services uses projects to hold its reports, and VB.NET uses projects to hold its VB.NET class files. In general, you want to align an SSIS project with a business project you’re working on. For example, you may have an SSIS project called “Data warehouse ETL.”

Projects mean much more in SQL Server 2012 than they did in SQL Server 2005 and 2008. This is because you now deploy projects, not packages, to production if your project is using the project deployment model. If you want to use the legacy deployment model where you deploy a package at a time, you will use the package deployment model. The new ...

Get Knight's Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Integration Services 24-Hour Trainer now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.