Getting Started with SQL Server Integration Services

You've no doubt heard of SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) by now, and probably even know that it's the SQL Server 2005 replacement for the older Data Transformation Services. Microsoft calls SSIS "a platform for building high performance data integration solutions, including extraction, transformation, and load (ETL) packages for data warehousing." A simpler way to think of SSIS is that it's the solution for automating SQL Server. But it's also one of the more complex parts of the latest version of SQL Server, and it can be tough to get started with it. In this article, I'm going to give you the whirlwind SSIS tour. This won't be enough to make you an expert, or even to leave you building your own SSIS packages without referring to the documentation. But it should help you get oriented in this complicated new world.

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