Knight's Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Integration Services 24-Hour Trainer

Welcome to SSIS

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is one of the most powerful applications in your arsenal for moving data in and out of various databases and files. Like the rest of the business intelligence (BI) suite that comes with SQL Server, SSIS is already included in your SQL Server license when you pay for the Standard, BI, or Enterprise editions of SQL Server. Even though SSIS is included in SQL Server, you don’t even need to have SQL Server installed to make it function. Because of that, even if your environment is not using a lot of SQL Server, you can still use SSIS as a platform for data movement.

Though ultimately this book is more interactive in nature, this introduction first walks you through a high-level tour of SSIS so you have a life preserver on prior to jumping in the pool. Each topic touched on in this introduction is covered in much more depth throughout the book in lesson form and in the supporting videos on the DVD.

Import and Export Wizard

If you need to move data quickly from almost any data source to a destination, you can use the SSIS Import and Export Wizard (shown in Figure 1). The wizard is a quick way to move the data and perform very light transformations of data, such as casting of the data into new data types. You can quickly check any table you want to transfer, as well as write a query against the data to retrieve only a selective amount of data.

Figure 1

SQL Server Data Tools

SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) is the central tool that ...