SSIS Valuable Features
Data Flows are the main component we use. These can range from a simple source to sink ETL, to many source to many sink dataflows.
For flexibility and to make reading the logs in case of errors, I prefer not to put multiple copy operations in the same dataflow, although that is possible. I try to keep in mind how to make production operations as easy as possible in case of failures. I want to give the night crew the best opportunity for success when an error does occur.
We have about one error per 400 processes. About 3/4 of these were transitory issues with issues like slow connections and temporary outages. By making the code rerunnable, we can auto-restart on any error, and that resolves 3/4 without human intervention. This leaves any failure after two retries the only issue that the night crew has to do Root Cause Analysis (RCA) on.
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he ability of SSIS to transform and transport data is extremely valuable to me. It allows for intelligent extraction and manipulation of data during the process. Improved error handling would enhance ETL processes further. I haven't directly utilized the data flow components but they seem capable of supporting complex data integration needs.
View full review »Many features are very good in SSIS.
I can create a particular package, and I don't need to repeat it again and again. For example, I can create a package that will fetch all the data from the given data. If my client gives me some data, I can clean some data, perform some transformations, and then store the data in any place. That's quite helpful for me as well. I don't have to do it again and again manually. I just have to create a package, schedule it, and it could be run, and it could be stored in any target I have. It can run for me, again and again, without me having to re-make it manually again and again.
It is easy to set up the product.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
SSIS
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SSIS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
We like that this solution includes a developer edition, free of charge, to allow for training.
This solution is a free, additional feature with an SQL database license, which we appreciate.
This tool works well when users aren't working with large amounts of data.
It is easy to set up the solution.
View full review »The performance is better than doing it in some alternative ways. We don't have to worry about so much manual work.
Mostly it was helping us with importing XML files by checking the access and then doing some look-ups and containers to implement loops and things like that mostly. That was quite helpful in terms of saving time.
Technical support is helpful.
View full review »HÖ
reviewer2305518
Business Intelligence Architect at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
In my experience with SSIS, I have found its most valuable features to be its package management capabilities and the flexibility it offers in designing workflows. We often use templates, inheriting and embedding scales in SSAS to streamline our processes.
Overall, it's a good product. I haven't had any issues with the product.
View full review »The most valuable feature of SSIS is its ease of use. It is easier to use than other applications.
View full review »It allows us to use our own logic. We can create our own packages where it can help us to define the business logic.
It is easy to set up. The deployment is also very quick.
It is stable and reliable.
The product is scalable.
SSIS provides you with lookup and transformation functions, and you have the flexibility to write your own custom code.
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Dominic Mackenzie
Data Architect at AMP Capital
SSIS is an easy way to do data integration from various data sources. It doesn't matter whether it's a database, flat files, XML, or Web API. It can talk to the and join them all together.
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Vineth Suresh
Senior Associate at PwC Acceleration Centers
The most valuable features of SSIS are that it works with the query language and it can import data from different sources.
View full review »The most important features are it works well and provides self-service BI.
View full review »SR
Sérgio Rita
IT Manager at European University
It is the most valuable for staff processes in order to gain efficiency. It allows us to get the data normalized easily.
The solution is stable.
It can scale well.
The deployment process is very easy and quite quick.
They have good documentation.
View full review »MB
MichaelBarnett
Sr. Training Manager with 201-500 employees
It's something I needed for bulk imports. I'm not a big fan of it, but I haven't seen anything better.
AS
Azeezulla Sheriff
General Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
SSIS' best feature is SFTP connectivity.
View full review »LD
Letarik Terefe
IT Project Management /Research & Development Team Leader at Ethiopian Roads Administration
The performance is good.
It's easy to use.
The visibility is great.
We have found the solution to be very straightforward to set up.
The solution is stable.
It can scale well.
View full review »SB
Sipho Ngubonde
Admin at IEC (Electoral Commission of South Africa)
The main value of any Microsoft product is the ease of use. You can achieve more with less time. That's what's beneficial for me. With many competitors, you might need to spend more time coming up with a solution because you have to focus on taking care of the product.
View full review »TY
TarekYehia
Technical Consultant at LinkDev
Overall, it works well.
The performance is good.
It's saved time using visualization descriptions.
The initial setup is straightforward.
The product is scalable.
It's stable.
We find the solution to be reasonable.
View full review »The most valuable features of the solution stem from the convenience it offers, along with the ability to refresh data.
The solution is easy to use and developer friendly. Many customizations can be performed with a good grasp of the C# language.
View full review »The most valuable aspect of this solution is that it is simple to use and it offers a flexible custom script task.
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reviewer1436226
Manager, Data & Intelligence Group, Technical at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
The UI is very user-friendly and I like that the solution has the ability to adapt to multiple data sources.
SSIS integrates well with SQL servers and Microsoft products.
From a cost perspective, it's a cheaper option than other ETL tools.
Also, it has a lot of in-built transformation, and it's easy to learn.
View full review »EL
reviewer928125
BI Architect at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
It's a competent product. You can do a lot of things with it and learn how to use it. You can't do modern things with it, but you can do legacy things with it.
View full review »BA
Bob Amy
Sr. Architect - Data warehousing & BI at Molina Healthcare, Inc.
The most valuable features of this solution are the fast insert and fuzzy logic matching.
View full review »There are many good features in this solution including the data fields, database integration, support for SQL views, and the lookups for matching information.
View full review »AN
Alireza Nikseresht
CEO at Shiraz University
Usually, when I want to import data from other databases I use this solution. It's been about fifteen years that I've worked with an SQL server, and I'm a software developer. I've had many companies with different databases, and it's ranged from FoxPro, EDX and Oracle, and some other databases. When I want to import data I usually use this tool for importing data from the other databases to the server. It is really good, and it's solved many problems for me because I can choose the source table, destination table, source field, and destination field. I can match these things, I can write some queries to do this and because of that, I use this tool.
View full review »With this solution, there is the potential to expand so that you can immediately write code onto the SQL server. Auto-parallelization is also critical for us. It decides automatically how many parallel sessions you have to run to get your query handled. You don't need to take care of any code, which is ideal. It's also highly scalable.
View full review »The most valuable feature of SSIS is that it can handle real complex transformations.
View full review »SSIS is easy to use.
View full review »SSIS' most valuable feature is its reporting services.
View full review »MJ
Muhammad Arif Javed
Senior Manager Software Development at Techlogix
Script task and Script component for custom tasks: It gives you power to build your own logic if your requirements are not being fulfilled with existing available components. While the big thing is you can build your own components, that is not so straightforward.
It's visual design interface is good and you can easily understand the flow.
The debugging capabilities are great, particularly during data flow execution. You can look into the data and see what's going on in the pipeline. It has good logging capabilities as well.
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Ismail Lahbabi
Data Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The most valuable thing is that it is easy to connect with Microsoft tools. In Europe, particularly in France, a lot of companies use Excel, SQL Server, and other Microsoft tools, and it is easier to connect SSIS with Microsoft tools than other products.
It is also easy to learn and user-friendly. Microsoft is also good in terms of technical support. They have built a large community all over the world.
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Prodown567
Technical Product Owner, Team Lead at ARCA
I couldn't point out a specific feature above all others, but I can say the solution is very useful to us. It's well designed and quite straightforward. There isn't much of a learning curve involved. It's a well-documented solution.
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Sasidhar Parupudi
Principle Consultant at Keyrus South Africa
The most valuable features for our company are the flexibility and the quick turn around time in producing simple ETL solutions. Also, the use of the configuration on Azure. Our clients are basically secret sever based, so it works well there.
View full review »BD
Brian Dandeneau
Business Process and Strategy Specialist Advisor at NTTData
The packaging and how it is organized is good for someone that really has never seen ETL before.
View full review »MP
reviewer1194996
Senior Analyst at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
You can get data from any data source with SSIS and dump it to any outside source. It is helpful. Getting, extracting, converting, and dumping data doesn't require much effort because we can do everything in the user interface. You drag and drop, then give the required input. It's intuitive.
View full review »IS
Igor Smirnov
Director at Netica d.o.o.
The workflow features have been very valuable. You can have automated workflows and all the steps are controlled. The workflow functionality of integration services is excellent.
View full review »I have used most of the standard SQL features, but the ones that stand out are the Data Flows and Bulk Import.
View full review »CG
ChitraGovindasamy
BI Consultant at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Some of the valuable features I have found with this solution has been the variety of transformations that are possible and it works well with SQL servers. The majority of our clients that I worked for, their whole systems of data is using SQL server which has worked better for them.
The script component is very powerful, things that you cannot normally do, is feasible through C#. If you can write a script you can import it through the Script Task.
Its compatibility with Microsoft products has been very valuable to our company. It fits well within the architecture.
The interface is also very good. If users are familiar with Microsoft, then they'll be quite familiar with the interface.
View full review »VD
Vincent Diallo-Nort
student at University of Newcastle
It has the ability to be deployed into the cloud through Data Factory, and run completely as a software as a service in the cloud.
View full review »Like most Microsoft products, SSIS is user-friendly and easy to use.
View full review »AS
AhmedShaban
Database Consultant
I like that the data connections and all ODB connections are able to retrieve data from so many different databases. That's not only from SQL but also from other data sources as well. The data flow, which controls the data, including where to store it, is an excellent feature and is one of the most interesting points about SQL Integration Services.
The reporting on the solution is perfect. I didn't expect to see reporting features, but they are great.
View full review »We use everything in this solution, including a third party component called COZYROC. We try to explore and use this product to its fullest.
View full review »- Compatibility with the rest of Microsoft BI stack
- Scripting component which opens unlimited possibilities: by having the full .Net stack/libraries available, if you need a yellow rubber duck to quack every million rows, it will quack
- Inter-stream dependency mechanism built directly into the tool; the whole ETL solution can be driven off it without having to employ third party software
- Parallel processing of a data flow: let's say there's five steps in the flow and ech step consumes output from the preceding step; once step #1 is completed and its data passed to step #2, the engine will feed the next batch of rows to step #1. Once the first batch of rows reaches the last step, there are five concurrent steps working on five different data sets, maximizing utilization of server resources
- All the necessary types of enumerators (files, xml nodes, rows and many more)
The most valuable feature is the data integration process. It includes helpful functions such as data mapping, creating a connection, and loading.
The performance and stability are good.
View full review »The data reader is the most valuable feature.
View full review »The most valuable feature of SSIS is that you can take data from other servers which are not MS SQL Server or Oracle.
View full review »RH
RajeshHegde
Assistant Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
In SSIS, the scope is not only to handle ETL challenges, but it will allow us to do so many other tasks, such as DBA activities, scripting, calling any .exe or scripts, etc.
View full review »RS
Ricardo_Silva
Big Data Architect, Integration Specialist at Groundswell Group Inc
This solution is easy to implement, has a wide variety of connectors, has support for Visual Basic, and supports the C language.
View full review »KS
KirillSlivchikov
Owner at 7Spring Consult
The simplicity of the solution is great. The solution also offers excellent integration.
View full review »JF
BIConsule1f7
BI Consultant at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
It has a drag and drop feature that makes it easy to use. It has a good user experience because it takes into account your most-used tools and they're lined up nicely so you can just drag and drop without looking too far. It also integrates nicely with Microsoft.
View full review »The interface is very user-friendly.
View full review »Its easy to use, fast to develop. Quite easy to also add C# or other code into ETL flow. Transfer to production is much faster than for example with IBM Infosphere Datastage, you can just copy the packages. Haven't found bugs much at all. Its license cost is also quite cheap compared to IBM and Informatica offerings. Overall when choosing a new ETL software I would look into SSIS or one of the open source tools.
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Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services provides you the ability to build ETL solutions with very minimum background knowledge. If you are already familiar with DTS packages or fairly new to ETL, it is very easy for you to start with your first assignment using SSIS.Microsoft SSIS not only provides you the traditional ETL tasks for loading data from source to destination, it also provides you the ability to send emails using it and write your custom code using Script task and offers to process SSAS task, which makes it stand out from its competitors.It is specifically designed to provide high data transfer using parallel computational logic.Very easy to configure and deploy and maintenance is very low.
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DevoSft67
Software Developer at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It has good data integration and good processes.
View full review »The most valuable features are the relatively short learning curve, and the automation capabilities provided through the BIML add-in for SSDT.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
SSIS
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SSIS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.