SSIS Reviews

We use SSIS to copy production data to Reporting Repositories. We use it for data movement from and to SQL or flat files such as CSV or fixed data.  This is primarily to build and update a data lake and data warehouse. 

More custom use cases are to do DQ validation comparing source to destination, and to extract data from bat files and SSIS files in order to build a metadata repository for documenting and mapping all the ETL packages.  We use this to find the packages responsible for any particular table or file, or vice versa.  This system, along with statistics logging, also gives us summary reporting capability.

I like that SSIS lets us build programs top-down. Starting with the control section, then drilling into the details of the steps make more sense than what Informatica requires, where you have to build each block first, then use a different tool to build the control structure.

In production, SSIS does a very good job of distributing work to many threads. It is robust and does a good job of handling overload conditions. It is simple for basic jobs, yet able to do very complex tasks. When all else fails, code can be written to make your own custom task or even tool.

I believe SSIS is not given the credit it deserves. SSIS does what most other new vendors tout as great features. But it is a very mature and stable product, unlike those others. It is supported by a larger company than many of those other products.

The error messages are pretty clear and point you to the problem well.

I am disappointed that Azure Data Factory did not stay closer to SSIS.

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.

We purchase an add-on called task factory primarily to allow bulk delete, update, and upsert capability. I'd like to see this be part of the standard package.

I believe there are ways to build a model and set variables so that it can be a generic process.

In my next system, I would like to have a generic process that would handle all the logging and processing in a model that can be modified and enhanced as the need for a better process, or different statistics to be logged is discovered.  I'd want this in a way that the model can be changed and all the processes, with their unique parameters, could all be changed with the model upgraded.

I believe they should add some features that help to create the code using a model. This would allow for continuous improvement of the model uses and easy replication of all the different programs that use the model.

15 years

Very mature and stable, and already has great performance features.

It can be very scalable both by adding memory or cores, and by running the SSIS on a farm of servers.

I did not really need much.  SSIS has a lot of excellent help available for a web search.

Positive

Prior solutions used SQL triggers

We have more control over the ETL with SSIS.

Installation is quite easy.  There are some drivers and setting you may need to make, based on the sources or sinks you need.  I am hoping these are more embedded in the install process, as I have not set up a server since 2015.

In house.  

good

SSIS is part of SQL server, in itself a very solid product.

You can run SSIS on the same SQL server instance where your data warehouse is, using the compute power at night to update, and during the day for reporting and data analysis.

I did not evaluate other options.  SSIS was available, and it worked well.

I later changed jobs to another company that used SSIS, and worked to improve and grow their data warehouse solution.

After using SSIS, we have tried talend, informatica, and spark solutions.  I would go back to SSIS, even for a non Microsoft shop, if I were allowed to.

One of our primary use cases is working with issues related to the electronic components of cars.

The most important features are it works well and provides self-service BI.

I would like to see better technical documentation because many times information is missing.

I have been working with SSIS for the past two or three years.

I have found the stability to be acceptable.

The current scalability is ok and we have around seven to eight hundred users.

I am working with technical support currently on two open tickets and there seems to be some type of bug. They have not yet fixed these two open customer support tickets.

I would definitely recommend SSIS and I would rate SSIS a seven on a scale of one to ten.

We use the product sometimes to implement some ETL processes.

We have to transform some data from students so that we can help to make some decisions on what we call deterioration. We receive a lot of data from the government, and sometimes we have to split it into several parts as it is a huge amount of data. We have to put it in a standardized way. We use the solution as a product. It is one of the use cases that we do. When we have other systems, like for staff to control, we also use SSIS since it's appropriate to our system, and we need to put it in certain ways so that we can read it and manage it. 

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. 

We'd like them to develop data exploration more. 

The support could be better.

I've been using the solution for more than five years. 

The solution is stable. We haven't had any issues with that. If we need more processing power, we can increase the resources of the machines below it. 

The scalability is good.

We do not have a lot of users. The processes we do have run at night.

It's not about how many users use the solution, it's about how many people benefit from it. There are many that benefit from the output.

I've never used technical support. Microsoft does have a very good document library, however, if you have an issue and need support, it can take a very long time to get help.

Neutral

How easy or difficult the setup is depends on the size of the process that we want to normalize. If it is a big ETL, it's not always that fast. We are considering changing to a different platform so that it's easier. For example, we are looking into SQL to have another kind of data exploration.

The first time we initially set it up, it was quite fast. The deployment of the integration services for the very first time without any process implemented took about a day.

We handled the setup internally. We did not have to worry about dealing with any consultants or integrators. 

We have yearly licensing.

We are currently looking into SQL to see if it would be easier to use. 

We already have an enterprise contract with Microsoft. We didn't want to spend money on other solutions.

We still have a few versions running. The one that we use the most is the 2017 version.

I'd recommend the solution to others. I'd rate it seven out of ten.

If you are deploying a data strategy for your company, you need more than SSIS. If you need to go fast and implement some ETL processes with no help, it's quite easy to do and learn.

We are using SSIS for ETL and ELT in a business intelligence context. We bring in data from different sources and use SSIS transform and load it into our intermediate database where we are developing dashboards. There are three people doing configuration and about 50 end-users. 

SSIS provides you with lookup and transformation functions, and you have the flexibility to write your own custom code.

SSIS doesn't have a very good user interface, but if you can work with it, it'll provide you with almost all of the functionality.

We have been using SSIS for four years now.

The SSIS is highly stable, but there are occasional issues with the script component.

SSIS is not that scalable. You can scale it vertically to handle a high load, but it lacks horizontal scalability. 

Microsoft has some support for SSIS, but because the company is increasingly transitioning to the cloud, so these on-prem solutions are becoming obsolete.

The initial setup isn't too difficult, but it's not easy. Sometimes, you may need help from a database administrator to set up the SQL Server Integration Services. It can take almost a day to deploy. 

A database administrator can deploy it alone. You may need another person to develop the packages and set up ETL, so it's you need about two or three people for deployment in all. 

SSIS is included at no additional cost in the SQL Server license.

I rate SSIS seven out of 10. I would recommend using a cloud solution if possible, but if you need an on-prem product, SSIS is a good option. If you want to start using SSIS, there is a learning curve because SSIS isn't an easy solution to use. It's complicated, so you have to learn about the components and their functionalities to use them to meet your requirements. 

I am using SSIS for a primary database.

Not much but served as better alternative

The most valuable features of SSIS are that it works with the query language and it can import data from different sources. 

SSIS can improve by the minimum code requirements in stored procedures and exporting data is difficult. They could make it easier, it should be as easy as it is to import data.

I have been using SSIS for approximately seven years.

SSIS is stable.

SSIS has proven itself in scalability for datasets.

We have more than 500 people using this solution in my organization.

I have not contacted support.

Positive

The initial setup of SSIS is easy. The full deployment took approximately one hour.

When my company evaluated other solutions we chose SSIS because it was the most reliable solution in the market.

This solution was one of the easiest versions to use compared to other vendors' solutions. I would recommend SSIS to others.

I rate SSIS a nine out of ten.

This solution has all the functions needed. It is a complete solution and they are always adding additional features.

We're SSIS for flat file data ingestion. Our data sources are Excel files, but if the data sources are SQL servers, I use store procedures instead of SSIS packages.

SSIS is easy to use. 

SSIS is cumbersome despite its drag-and-drop functionality. For example, let's say I have 50 tables with 30 columns. You need to set a data type for each column and table. That's around 1,500 objects. It gets unwieldy adding validation for every column. Previously, SSIS automatically detected the data type, but I think they removed this feature. It would automatically detect if it's an integer, primary key, or foreign key column. You had fewer problems building the model. 

I have used SSIS for three or four months. 

SSIS is a stable product, but the problem is with the UI you use to build things. If you have it deployed on a virtual machine, everything crashes sometimes. That's one of the significant problems we face with Microsoft products.

We have problems with the ports for the analysis services. If everything is deployed, you need to redeploy. It's hard to scale out. If you plan to scale up, you need to prepare everything correctly from the start. Everything needs to be properly configured and deployed. 

We decided to use SSIS because most developers know SQL Server. If they need to hire data engineers, they can just use generic languages like SQL Portal. You don't need to know Talend or other data warehouses and database engines. They prefer SQL Server because that's the most common product.

Setting up SSIS is difficult. I rate it seven out of 10 for ease of setup. It takes around a week to setup a simple data warehouse with three tables. 

I rate SSIS six out of 10. SSIS can get the job done for bigger datasets. However, SQL Server lags if you're working with more than a terabyte or petabyte of data. I recommend exploring the tool because most of the video tutorials on the internet are outdated, and the official Microsoft documentation is geared toward advanced users. Beginners will have a hard time. You need a senior engineer to teach you, or you must explore the tool on your own.

I was using the solution to implement some business logic. What we do with the data collected is, for example, use it with Excel and some other databases. We do write our own logic to input the data into the SQL server. We'll be taking inputs and putting them into our business logic.

It is a very helpful tool to integrate. We can have our logic ready by putting data from different data sources, and based on our business requirements, we can have the logic created with the help of the SSIS package.

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. 

There aren't any improvements that are required for SSIS at the moment.

We'd like better data lake architecture so we can move SSIS to the data lake if necessary. Involving a data lake or data engineering aspects would be useful. While it is there, we need more features included. 

I've been using the solution for almost six years. 

The solution is stable. The performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

This is a very scalable product. You can expand easily.

We have 200 people using the solution. They are developers. 

I've never used technical support in the past. I don't have details as to how helpful or responsive they are. 

The solution is very straightforward. It's not overly complex. 

The package deployment takes some time. It depends on the size of the data which is being pulled in. For the normal setup, it hardly takes much time. For the most part, it is very fast.

I'm not sure of the exact cost of the solution. 

I'm an end-user.

We are using the latest version of SQL Server 2019. Typically, I start on-prem and move to the cloud. 

It's a good tool for merging data from various data sources. We can have automated administrative functions and data-loading features. We can populate the data for the data warehouse and for data merges. This is one of the best analytic tools for a person or enterprise. We can recommend it for data analysis and data analytics purposes.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

SSIS orchestrates data transformation in the environment, which includes Oracle and SQL Server databases.

The most valuable aspect of this solution is that it is simple to use and it offers a flexible custom script task.

Connectivity to databases other than Microsoft. This is the Achilles' heel.

Integration with other vendors' connectivity should be available as well as being able to read and write data to databases or data storage other than with Microsoft.

There is connectivity with other databases, however, this is the most significant issue that has to be addressed.

I have been using SSIS for five years, but I first used it in 2007.

SSIS is quite stable.

SSIS is moderately scalable.

The company is fairly substantial. They have approximately 400,000 people in the company, but I am not aware of how many are using this solution. It is quite a bit.

There are a lot of developers using it.

I am not aware if they plan to increase their usage, it is not within my decision.

In terms of my immediate surroundings, we intend to use cloud tools, Azure technologies, and Microsoft. First and foremost, Microsoft ADF. Azure Data Factory is the cloud's SSIS replacement.

For this particular product, we have not used technical support.

I started with SSIS but then switched to IBM Datastage.

That was where I worked, this was already in use at another organization. 

I recently moved jobs, and this is the platform of choice for ETL once again. Informatica data center was used in various other organizations. 

I was attending Informatica workshops. I wasn't Informatica actively, but I might in the future, perhaps soon.

The initial setup is straightforward.

It only took five minutes to deploy SSIS. 

For maintenance, we rely on our platform team.

We will probably need one person for maintenance. Let's say it's only one person. But I'm not speaking on behalf of the entire company; I'm speaking on behalf of a single team of perhaps 1,000 people.

We did not use a consultant or third-party vendor, everything was done in-house.

This is difficult since it is included in the SQL server license. 

Depending on the arrangement that a certain company has with Microsoft, it may supply the permanent license that is included in the SQL server license, or it may be a time-bound license if it is a partner license or other enterprise license. 

I am not sure what our relationship with Microsoft is like or what the program is, but I believe it's some sort of enterprise license.

In the past, I worked with permanent licenses.

I would recommend SSIS to others who would be interested in using it.

I would rate SSIS an eight out of ten.