I was recently called upon to learn the SQL Server SSIS (Integration Services) for a project because the client wanted pretty much everything to be done via SSIS and Notification Services.  Of course, the company with which I contract told their client that I knew it and could start working within a week... the problem is, I had only heard of SSIS, but never laid eyes on it.  For that matter, I didn't even have it installed on my development test server at home.

So, I loaded up the copy of SQL Server 2005 Standard that Microsoft gave me for attending their launch event on my development server, loaded up SQL Server 2005 Developers edition on my development machine, and got to work.

Like any task you are interested in beginning, I was immediately beset by an error trying to create my first Business Intelligence project: "Failed to save package file "..." with error 0x8002801D "Library not registered."  Oh boy!  Doing a Google search and looking around a little, I found a simple answer, just reregister the msxml6 and msxml3 packages (in cmd prompt, type "regsvr32 msxml6.dll" and repeat for msxml3).  That did it.

I spent the last few days with a book from Wrox titled "SQL Server 2005 Integration Services" or something along those lines (think it had the word "professional" in there somewhere... woo hoo).  That book has been GREAT!

I must say that while I was initially rather resistant to the idea of SSIS--thinking that it was trying to break the N-Tier development approach--but over the past few days have come to appreciate it's purpose.  In my own opinion, SSIS is NOT supposed to be used for an application; on the contrary, it is used to help workflow events of some sort from start to finish.  The classic example is importing data from one source and storing it in another source, likely having to convert or do other clean up along the way.  This was one example that interested me because frankly, I never bothered learning DTS, and because of that, I manually wrote import programs (and a lot of them).  Within a few clicks here and there, I had a fully functioning import program that converted data, performed transforms, aggregated data, heck, even created a report.  Wow!  That sure saved me hours of work.

I admit that I am only half-way through the Wrox book, but even so, I am very impressed with SSIS and can't wait to see what sort of hud I can accomplish with it.  I am no longer hesitant about the project that is coming up requiring me to heavily use SSIS, maybe I'll even post a blog when that happens.