Customer Reviews

Beginners Guide to SQL Server Integration Services Using Visual Studio 2005

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

SSIS is a very good data integration tool. It is easy to get started with, but takes some time and experience to master. Although I have some heavy beefs about the 2005 version (metadata management, validation issues, proprietary expression builder, no C# for the Script Task, etc...), all-in-all, I do find SSIS to be good to work with.

I was excited to get this book in the mail, as I know how difficult it is to find a good beginners guide for SSIS. I'm no longer a newbie, but I once was and I found that the good books were almost too advanced and too comprehensive to get some simple tasks done and to get a good understanding of the tool and involved concepts.

Unfortunately, I found this book difficult to read. I also found that it contained many technical inaccuracies. The author (a non-native English speaker I assume) struggles to get good, succinct points across. I am not saying that a total beginner could not get into this book and get a few packages developed, but for Data Warehousing professionals, DBAs, and developers, this is not the book to keep in your reference library.

For example, on page 123, the author writes:

"The Bulk Insert Task cannot be used with any of the data flow transformation components, and in this respect is not as versatile as a data flow task. This task has been provided for backward compatibility."

Hmmn... First of all, it would be nice to know why the Bulk Insert Task cannot be used with any of the transforms (short answer: The Bulk Insert Task is a Control Flow item). It would also be very helpful to the reader to have an idea why you would select a Bulk Insert over a Data Flow. Lastly, the Bulk Insert Task is *not* provided for backward compatibility!

I do not want to knock the author too much for sentence and paragraph structure. I am currently learning Dutch and wouldn't dream of being able to develop a technical book in my non-native tongue. I am assuming, of course, that English is not the author's native language. so this next example might be more geared towards the editors who I think have a responsibility to help ESL authors with these sorts of things. One example, which is indicative of the entire text, is on page 33:

"The default package is empty when created with the name, Package."

Does this mean if I change the name from "Package" to "FoxPro", it won't be empty anymore? Of course, it is easy to understand what the author means here. But it is sentences like this that really make the reading quite difficult and choppy.

As a BI\DW professional, I was terribly disappointed with how the author sets the beginner up for diving into SSIS. For example, the definitions for common terms such as Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, data mining, data lineage, metadata management, data conformity, data profiling, data quality, dimensions, ETL, OLAP, ROLAP, MOLAP, etc. were either inadequate or missing entirely. I would want beginners under my wing to know a little more about why they are using the tool and not so much a step-by-step cookbook on how to utilize some of the tasks. To me, that is what the help file is for!

Other issues I have:

(1) There are too many screenshots and no figure numbers to refer to them.

(2) Inconsistent naming: Data Flow page, canvass, or view? Task, item, or component? Etc..

(3) In the sections in the beginning of the book, the author attempts to define the SSIS lexicon. The definitions presented in almost every case are inadequate (check OLEDB Command and SCD Task for example). The user would be better off opening BIDS and reading the tooltips of each item!

(4) Using Visual Studio 2005? How about call it what Microsoft does: Business Intelligence Development Studio, or "BIDS". To be fair, the BIDS and VS shells are exactly the same. The major difference is that if you install BIDS, you have a different set of packages available (SSAS, SSIS, and SSRS) and not C# and ASP.NET (for example). Also, in all the literature (to my knowledge), MS refers to BIDS and not VS. This could be a point of confusion for a beginner.

(5) There was virtually no discussion on best practices. There were several opportunities for the author to introduce some best-practice, good advice for the beginner.

(6) The book's index is totally inadequate. I can't believe that there are no terms for letters G, H, I, J, K, L, N, Q, R, U, V, Y or Z! I can understand Q not having anything of significance, but how do I look up the Lookup Task? Row Sampling? Union All?

(7) How about more discussion on error handling, logging, and auditing? These are absolutely critical items that need to be discussed -- especially for the beginner!

(8) What about the SCD Task?

Seriously, I could go on, but I think you know how I feel. I would be happy to share with you additional thoughts as well.

If you can create an SSIS package, and understand most of what the different toolbox object are, this is not the book for you. If you don't even know ho to create an SSIS package, and need to do so quickly, buy this book. In a couple hours, you'll be proficient in the basics of SSIS.

Packt asked me to review this book, and their timing was perfect--I was ready to start an SSIS project but had no experience. I was a heavy DTS user, and the difference between DTS and SSIS blew my mind. The first two chapters are a reference of the different flows, transformations, sources and destinations available, and the rest of the book is essentially a workbook, full of how-to examples for very common tasks. Even if what you need to do isn't covered,

I did hope there would be a section on the new "fuzzy" objects, but there was none. This book also does not discuss way to organize your solutions and projects, but this also was left to more advanced books.

I've loaned this book to several coworkers, and all have found it useful. We all came up to a basic understanding of SSIS very quickly, and have a good enough understanding to pick up more advanced examples.

I am new to SQL and SSIS and have been on a mission to master SSIS in SQL 2005. I have purchased about a dozen books, but have yet been able to use most of the books because they are too advanced (even though most say they are for new users).

On my last round of book purchases I picked up Jayaram's "Beginners Guide to SQL...", this is BY FAR the BEST book I have purchased on SSIS! I have actually been able to walk through each one of the examples in the book to gain better understanding of how SQL SSIS works. The books has a lot of excellent screenprints (they do not have figure numbers, but they follow they text and I wasn't confused without the numbers).

The writing style of the book was really straight forward and to the point step-by-step directions, so that you can follow along with a sample database.

Please note in the title of this book it says 'for beginners', so some of the more advanced topics may not be in this book, but it definitely sets you up to have a basic concept and then you can move on. This book allowed me to be able to open the other books I have purchased (and gave me a clue what they were saying).

I would recommend purchasing this book if you are new to SSIS and would like to have a textbook style reference that you can refer back to see how to setup the different SSIS concepts.

-SB

I come from DTS (SQL server 2000) got very frustrated with SSIS. DTS packages I use to write "with my eyes closed" became nightmare adventures in SSIS I purchased a $300 online video course. It didn't help much. When I got this book the whole game changed. This is a great book. If you have a DTS background you'll love this book, if you have no DTS background it's even better... The book is very detailed well written. I highly recommend it. I hope Jayaram will be writing an intermediate and advanced book on this topic.

Learning SSIS is one of the most challenging skills for any developer. But this book has made it really easy for any starting developer. This book was specifically written for starting developers as it show the specific steps on how to develop an application from the scratch. Experienced developers will know a trick or two based on the things covered here. The book actually exploits all the possible functions that could be used in SSIS so experienced developers will have the chance to rediscover some of these functions and apply them to their application.

The book is written in learning stages: each part of the SSIS application along with its Visual Studio 2005 counterpart for application development is discussed. These functions are then tested to an actual application. Actual screenshots are used to give the developers an idea on how the application development progresses.

But not everything is presented at once. In the early chapters of the book, developers will first learn the basics on software development using SSIS and Visual Studio 2005. The actual use of the software development tool is presented later.

These basics are enough for the build a simple application. Once the basics are covered an exercise is presented so that developers can immediately apply what they have learned. As the chapters progresses, advanced functions and skills are presented. It is again presented through a series of screen shots so that developers could understand how it is done. Once enough information has been presented, another battery of tests so that skills will be used in the actual scenario.

If you are looking for a good book to start developing SSIS with Visual Studio 2005, this book provides a great start. This book could easily become a good reference book as the skills of the developer progresses in SSIS and Visual Studio.

I recently lent this book to a DBA friend who wanted me to post his review:

SQL Server Integration Services Using Visual Studio 2005 is exactly what it claims to be; it's a beginners guide, and a good one at that. Being an experienced SQL DBA and .NET programmer I'm familiar with the inner workings of the SQL engine, T-SQL code, and .NET code as well as how they work together in the background. I was not expecting to have this information presented in this book and it wasn't which is good as I think it would overwhelm most beginners.

What this book did provide is a detailed explanation of the various objects and tasks that one would need to understand in order to create useful SSIS packages.

Having been burned more than once by the terrible DTS packages in SQL 2000 I have been very slow to adopt SSIS for anything, typically choosing to write elaborate T-SQL scripts. This has two problems: one is source control, the other is that they're often too complex for Jr. admins (or non admins) to tackle. Using the various tasks demonstrated in this book it becomes possible for beginners to tackle tasks like importing and exporting data, sending emails from SQL, working with web services, and even event handling!

Whether you're a hard-core Visual Studio user who is looking to do some work with SQL, or a newcomer to SQL itself this book will have you covered.

This book is an Excellent book on SSIS. I have been looking for a book like this where I can find real life examples. This book provides step by step directions to use the SSIS tools. If you are a SQL DBA or have a little experience with DTS; this is book you need. Look no further; Don't waste time buying other books. I loved the Step by step directions; and the screen shots for various steps on the example. I am going to buy the Reporting Services book of the same auther. Jayaram Krishnaswamy is the BEST author.

I was a moderately capable DTS user and felt like MS jerked the rug out from under me with SSIS. Who needs all these windows and properties? Not me. And I had no idea HOW to do the simpliest things in SSIS once my converted DTS packages needed updating.

This book saved me. There are some language issues, but even things that seem like they'd really throw you (e.g reversing to and from) are not show stoppers. You just have to read it with a little patience.

There are examples of transformations I don't need, but the basic mechanics of how to navigate the SSIS are great and the detailed explanation in Chapter 10 of how to move data from Excel to Access gave me enough clues to move it into SQL. Though I wish he had mentioned a comon error where Excel data is defaulted to a unicode type DT_WSTR and must be converted (in the data conversion object) to DT_STR for SQL to handle it.

There is room for a better beginners book, and there are certainly more advanced books available, but for now this is a great resource for people who need to do relativily simple packages which are nevertheless beyond the wizards

This book was worth the money for me. While I am familiar with DTS and SSIS, I've never used them and therefore had no experience for getting started. This book was enough to show me how to create working-though-simple SSIS packages that I can put into production in my work environment. I have yet to find a reference that was easy to read and without speed bumps from one step to the next; this book is the same in that regard. If you need everything spoon-fed to you, you may have problems. The examples are also very simple; they do not go into more advanced details and I can already see I will need more information for certain concepts. But if you need "Hello World" examples to get you going, this is the book you need. But before you do, you will need Visual Studio .NET with Business Intelligence installed an an SQL server that will run SSIS packages.

The back cover of the book states that the intended audience is ..."beginners in the developer track who are looking to get an exposure to SSIS". It was right on the money.

The book starts off with the a great introduction to what SSIS is and what it is made up of. In then goes into, in depth, how to use Visual Studio 2005 to create, modify, debug and execute SSIS packages. The rest of the book is a series of Hands On labs guiding you through different task like transferring date from xyz source to SQL Server, which I find to be the best way for me to learn a topic. There is one chapter on scripting with unfortunately for my task a bit simple. It would have been nice to see an advanced script, maybe something that calculated a value and updated a column.

There were two things that the book was missing... It did not talk about the error handling or logging available in SSIS other than a mention that SSIS has it.

In summary, this is a great book for beginners to SSIS and DBA's that what to start using Visual Studio to debug their SSIS packages.