Professional SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (Programmer to Programmer) (1-200) (Excerpt)

The book provides a good starting point to learn SSIS, especially if you never worked with DTS.
However the book does give you a feeling that it was hurried, and the case study really does not adress the challenges you will face in real projects.

But for the Novice, this is a great book to get started with Integration Services.

Microsoft has been changing the way we think of a lot of their applications. SQL Server has been a well known, well respected data base product for many years. Now they are expanding the ancillary programs that go around the basic database to provide much greater functionality than just a database.

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a new data integration application in SQL Server 2005. The function of SSIS is to enable the developer to pull data from disparate sources that were not designed to work together into one managable storage area.

SSIS is a greatly expanded, script driven, successor to the earlier Data Translation Services. DTS was first used by most of us to translate the file formats from our previous data base to SQL Server. That program which was basically a point and click translator has now been made into an application with far more utility. So much utility that you might want to forget DTS except as part of your past.

You can still use Integration Services (SSIS) to import and export data between different databases. There's even an Import and Export Wizard still in SSIS, it's still what you need for data in different formats.

The Microsoft philosophy is to make everything GUI driven. SSIS uses the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS), a light version of Visual Studio. (If you have a full blown version of Visual Studio, you can use it with SSIS.) Most of the book is centered around BIDS, and it discusses just about everything you can do with SSIS. If you're going to be using it, this is a good place to start.

This book, for me, struck a good balance of reference text and tutorial. Too many books go for one extreme or another, making it difficult to wade through information out of context, or cookbook solutions that don't cover my real world problems.

While I share the enthusiasm of the other reviewers, I'm not entirely convinced that any of them have read far enough to give the book 5 stars. I have nearly 10 years under my belt in BI, worked with SQL Server extensively, and not too shabby in the .NET department either; to be certain, SSIS 2005 is truly groundbreaking. However, the watchful readers will find a hurried book in their hands, one numerous typos and misleading information. For example, while I was able to figure out the nature of the strongly-typed properties of the incoming Row object for the Script Component example (Chapter 7) (you need to define the "Cleaned" ones yourself in the Script Transformation Editor to support the code for your Script Component), the book isn't completely clear and such information may not be so apparent to those new to the SSIS (or ETL) experience. Donald Farmer's book covering SSIS 2005 Scripting (the beta version) covers the Script Task and Script Component Transform Task better than Professional SQL Server 2005 Integration Services. Whilst I have focused on Chapter 7, I have found this pattern throughout the book. To be clear, I'm not terribly displeased with this book... it provides just enough coverage of the new product to get you going (with a welcome "under the hood" look at the SSIS engine) it's just that a 2nd Edition is required from WROX/WILEY to clean up its somewhat misleading content.

Great resource, well documented. Highly recommend, to anyone currently looking at SSIS. Detailed examples, well laid out and well written. WROX rocks again!