Beginning Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Programming

Chapter 18. Getting Integrated with Integration Services

Note

If you're running a mixed environment with SQL Server 2005 or migrating from that version, do not fear. SQL Server 2008 Integration Services will run old DTS packages with the installation of Legacy Services in the Installation Wizard when you install SQL Server 2008.

Use the SSIS Package Migration Wizard to help upgrade old DTS packages.

In the previous chapter, we got our first serious taste of the Business Intelligence Development Studio (also sometimes referred to as BIDS). In case you skipped again, BIDS is the Visual Studio 2008 development environment with some special SQL Server-oriented project templates and tools. The very different ways we use that environment for just SQL Server development gives something of a taste for just how flexible the Visual Studio development environment is—as we'll see, Integration Services has a pretty different feel than Reporting Services does.

In this chapter, we'll be looking at how to utilize SQL Server Integration Services (often simply called SSIS) to perform basic import and export of data, and we'll briefly discuss some of the other things possible with tools like Integration Services.

Understanding the Problem

The problems being addressed by Integration Services exist in at least some form in a large percentage of systems—how to get data into or out of our system from or to foreign data sources. It can be things like importing data from the old system into the new, or a list ...