The Microsoft® Data Warehouse Toolkit: With SQL Server™ 2005 and the Microsoft® Business Intelligence Toolset

5.4. ETL System Physical Design

The last information to document before pulling together the detailed ETL system specification is the details about the ETL system physical design. Consider where Integration Services will run in test and production; where and how big the staging area will be; and where package definitions will be stored and how they will be named.

It may surprise you to learn that there aren't any global configuration parameters for Integration Services. Beyond installing Integration Services and the BI Studio tools, there's really nothing else to set up.

5.4.1. System Architecture and Integration Services

Integration Services has two major components: a design environment that's part of the BI Studio, and a runtime environment. The design environment is where you create, edit, and debug packages. The only way to remotely execute an Integration Services package in development/debugging mode is to use a remote desktop connection to the remote machine.

On test or production systems, use the DTExecUI or DTExec utility to execute packages. You can run on one server a package that is stored on a different server. In production, Integration Services packages can be located anywhere, and can be run on any server that has the Integration Services runtime executables.

You need a SQL Server 2005 license on any server that has the Integration Services runtime executables installed on it. Chapter 4 includes a discussion of how you may configure your SQL Server 2005 system, ...