Item: SQL Server Integration Services
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SQL Server Integration Services is used by our department to support the entire organization. Several developers design our packages and as well our DBA team who develops, reviews, and implements these in production.

SSIS is a critical component in making data available across disparate systems from custom databases to local vendor and online applications.

Pros and Cons

SQL Server Integration Services design of dataflows allow us collect and merge data from a large variety of sources.
The structure of packages in a solution allow us to separated distinct functions yet share a common collection of parameters to ensure consistency.
The availability of environments to provide differing parameters is also a powerful option to allow us to design reusable solutions.

The deployment process could use the improvement of deploying the Parameters into an environment of choice. Having to do this manually is time consuming and error prone.
Propagation of values from within a package to a parent package is lacking. This is helpful when using a parent package to execute and report on a collection of smaller related packages.

Return on Investment

Being able to automate data integration across systems has always been a great source of savings, so the ROI is there.
The nice thing about SSIS is that it can continue to grow, so a project this year provides and ROI for every year going forward, and frees up time to implement additional integration opportunities further increasing ROI.

Key Insights

Do you think SQL Server Integration Services delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with SQL Server Integration Services's feature set?

Yes

Did SQL Server Integration Services live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of SQL Server Integration Services go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy SQL Server Integration Services again?

Yes

Other Software Used

SQL Sentry, Task Factory

Likelihood to Recommend

There are certainly always other ways to provide integration as needed. I find SQL Server Integration Services very flexible and broad in the range of things needed to provide a robust integration solution. Vendor interfaces are possibly a key area in deciding what tools to use, and coworkers have used tools like PowerShell to help. We also use another Vendor add-on to help our SSIS implementation to ease use.

SQL Server Integration Services proves to be a valuable tool.

Overall Satisfaction with SQL Server Integration Services