Saturday, December 13, 2014

SQL Server 2012 SSIS Enhancements

SQL Server 2012 Undo and Redo Features


Parameters can be defined at 2 different levels:
Project. These type of parameters are available to all packages within the SSIS project. Think about them as global parameters. They come handy as it makes really easy to share a given value, such as the path to a file share or the name of a server, across all packages in a project.
         Package. These type of parameters are meant to affect only the package on which they were defined.
-------------------------------------------------------------

Very often I had difficult a time creating SSIS packages.  Unfortunately, when I did something wrong and wanted to revert the last change, I was unable to do so.  It was very frustrating.   As an example, sometimes I unintentionally deleted a task, which I wanted to get back. At times, I had to revert back to the SSIS package version in the VSTF version store. This was all because we did not have any way to undo or redo our changes. Now with SQL Server 2012, we have this feature in the SSIS designer.
Edit Menu SSIS Undo and Redo
As you can see in the image above, you can now use Undo or Redo commands using the menu bar, toolbar or by pressing CTRL+Z for "undo" and by pressing CTRL+Y for "redo".
SSIS Undo Drop Down List
The designer now tracks all the actions that you perform, which you can see in the image above and below.  You have the ability to Undo or Redo as many actions as you want.
SSIS Redo Drop Down List


SQL Server Integration Services Toolbox Enhancements

Now the components inside the toolbox have been placed in few more categories (Favorites and Common) for ease of use.  These categories are not fixed and you can customize it as per your need. For example, you can place all your frequently used components inside "Favorites" section which appears at the top of the Toolbox as shown below:
SSIS Toolbox
To move a component to some other location/category, right click on the component and click on the location where you want that component to be placed as shown below.
SSIS Toolbox move to favorites
On a final note, one really good aspect of the enhanced toolbox is the information section on the bottom of the toolbox.  This area displays details about selected component and provides an option to directly jump to the documentation for that selected component. This is really useful for someone new to SSIS development and/or someone that does not have prior knowledge about the component.

SQL Server Integration Services Solution Explorer Enhancements

There are some noticeable changes in the SSIS Solution Explorer. Deployment of SSIS packages has been a challenge as we had to deploy each SSIS package individually. There was no way to create a deployment package containing all the SSIS packages similar to some of the SSRS and SSAS functionality to deploy all objects. SQL Server 2012 now supports a new project deployment model as well as the legacy deployment model. Discussion about new Project Deployment Model in itself is a big topic, so check out the SSIS Package Deployment Model in SQL Server 2012 (Part 1 of 2) and SSIS Package Deployment Model in SQL Server 2012 (Part 2 of 2) tips.  In a nutshell, the Legacy Deployment Model lets you deploy each individual package separately whereas the new Project Deployment Model lets you create deployment packet (which is an *.ispac file) from the SSIS project. Each SSIS project which you create in SQL Server 2012, by default gets created in Project Deployment Model which you can change if needed as shown below:

SSIS Solution Explorer Convert to Legacy Deployment Model
As previously indicated the new SSIS projects get created in the Project Deployment Model. When you right click on the project you will notice two more options. The "Project Parameters" let's you define the parameters in the project and the "Deploy" option let's you create the deployment package or deploy to the Integration Services Catalog database.
SSIS Deployment
If you right click on the package in the Solution Explorer, you will notice one more option (Entry-Point Package). This option is helpful in the scenario when you have a parent package which calls child packages. You can set the Entry-Point Package option for the parent package.
Integration Services Entry-point Package


No comments:

Post a Comment