Denali (SQL11) New SSIS Features

[James Beresford]

Jamie Thompson has highlighted a set of TechNet articles on the new features coming in SSIS in Denali / SQL 11, which are all followable from this starting link.

SSIS Projects

The features highlighted fall under the concept of “Project Deployment”. This is a change in the way package deployment works (hopefully it will work better than the last mechanism), but importantly adds a new concept – Parameters. These are effectively*a project wide set of variables that are available to every package – which puts an end to endless chaining of Parent Package variables or collecting the same*settings in every package for an execution scenario. These Parameters can*reference another new concept, an*Environment Variable*which can drive different values into the parameter according*to which *Environment you are operating in.

Another feature that is only mentioned in passing is that when a project is deployed, previous versions of the project are retained so rollback is a simple server operation.

Design Improvements

A few design-time improvements are on the way too. Undo / Redo appears at last, the Toolbox has better organisation options and components can now be edited when disconnected. Data Viewers are easier to use and column mapping has become easier when sources / targets change.

Overall

This is hopefully not all we are getting in SQL11, but that will probably depend on the interlinking with some of the other features I suspect are coming and cannot discuss here. The Projects feature is nice, and the Design Time improvements will address some of the frustrations of working with SSIS. I will have to see if I can get my hands on this CTP…



Get More from the original blog...