SSIS Reviews

We use this solution for ETL, which includes data summation and cleaning. 

This solution used in an on-premise deployment, for now.

I have used most of the standard SQL features, but the ones that stand out are the Data Flows and Bulk Import.

The synchronous processing needs to be improved. For batch processing, it works fine, but when you start to do real-time processing, I find that this solution is not strong, depending on how you use it. If you use it for short batches, micro batching, that might work, but it is not as good for queuing real-time processing. This solution needs full support for real-time processing.

The solution needs better support for XML and JSON.

I use this product extensively, on a daily basis. It is stable.

Over time, I think we'll most likely start to decrease usage. This will happen as we move to more real-time processing, and we will most likely start to do more queue processing. In terms of batch processing, it will scale down considerably.

In the catalog, it's supposed to be scalable. I think that it has support for an SQL cluster.

In my opinion, I think it's a bit more limited in terms of scalability, although it scales with the database. I would say that the scalability is intermediate in terms of being able to launch multiple instances, or it could do load balancing as well. I think that would be a bit more challenging.

We haven't needed to contact Microsoft technical support. When we have trouble we usually use Google to search for what we need to find out. Also, in terms of issues, there's a lot of information on SQLServerCentral and Stack Overflow.

For the most part, we started with this solution. 

The initial setup of this solution is pretty much straightforward.

If you want to develop with Visual Studio then you have to install the data service add-ons afterward, so it is a bit cumbersome. Then, if you want to use the catalog on the database, with deployment there are often security issues and you have to get an SQL catalog up and running. This can also be a bit cumbersome.

I would say that it takes a day or two to deploy this solution in a new environment, and it can be completed by one or two people. A single developer may be sufficient to deploy and maintain the system.

I implemented some of this myself and had help in terms of setting up the security. There are often security settings that require the assistance of a DBA.

This solution was already in place. That's what is available and it's what people know. Going forward, this will most likely change.

My advice to anybody implementing this solution is to look into whether to use it on a catalog in a database, versus using package deployment. There are pros and cons to both approaches in terms of deployment and security. I would say that's something that needs to be evaluated quite early. There are lots of benefits to the catalog, but also a bit more admin attached to it.

Another consideration is real-time processing needs. If this is a requirement then I would recommend against using this solution, unless the next version has a new set of features specifically for real-time processing.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I use this solution to create BI reports. I have used SSIS in more than twenty projects over the past six years.

There are many good features in this solution including the data fields, database integration, support for SQL views, and the lookups for matching information.

I have had problems in the past with this tool. The debugging could be improved because when it came to solving the errors that I've experienced in the past, I've had to look at the documentation for more information.

The main difficulty that I have had is to match different data types, where there were errors that I could not fix.

I would like to see better integration with the control sources. 

I am satisfied with the technical support for this solution.

The initial setup of this solution is quite simple.

We handled the installation of this solution in-house.

Overall, I am quite satisfied with this product.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

This product is always used in projects because I'm in a company that develops software for other companies and we accept this type of work like programming and developing data models and writing the script for organizations to transfer their data between databases. We usually use these tools, and it's a cheap tool for us.

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.

Sometimes when we want to publish to other types of databases it's not easy to publish to those databases. For example, the Jet Database Engine. Before the SSIS supported Jet Database Engine but nowadays it doesn't support the Jet Database Engine. We connect to many databases such as Access database, SparkPros databases and the other types of databases using Jet Database Engines and SSIS now doesn't seem to support it in our databases.

In future releases, it would be helpful to support new SQL databases. It would also be helpful if there was a way to use SQL with other languages like Python or ASP.NET.

The stability is very good and I recommend it to my friends, my coworkers, and the other companies.

The solution is scalable.

The initial setup was very easy for us and very good.

I installed the solution by myself.

The price is important to us. We are based in Iran, and we look for products with a good price because of the sanctions. Some other products such as Oracle are expensive here and we do not recommend these products to our customers. They are expensive and they are very difficult to work with them. They are very difficult and very complicated but Microsoft products are not like that.

I used this product when I was a student so I chose this technology because I understood it best. 

We chose the solution because we have some data in Oracle and we wanted to extract it and load the data into SQL Server. 

The type of port, like SSIS, I always recommend other companies to use it and other Microsoft products because they are very easy to use. There are very handy tools. It's very user-friendly and has a good dashboard.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

The primary use case for this solution varies according to the customer, but it typically involves moving data from OLTP systems into a data warehouse and/or data marts.

This solution has provided an inexpensive tool and it is easy to find experienced developers.

The most valuable features are the relatively short learning curve, and the automation capabilities provided through the BIML add-in for SSDT.

The UI could use refinement. I would like to see more standard components out of the box, such as SFTP, and data compression components.

Movement of data and creation of files. ALl the typical things that you would have a ETL solution do. Data movements were in the millions and no calculations were completed. This means it was always a select * from where ever it was coming from and going to. Light translations like concatenation was being used. 

SSIS was easily adaptable to our group. It was cheaper than the other tools that we compared it to, however I feel that we got what we paid for.

The packaging and how it is organized is good for someone that really has never seen ETL before. 

Scalability of SSIS needs some improvement. Seems to get sluggish as soon as we hit a high volume of data.

Again it failed a lot and by a lot I mean every day. The failures were false alarms and caused many sleepless night for our company that I used to work for.

SSIS is good for smaller shops that don't really have a high volume of data.

I would rate the customer service as poor. 

We were using Hyperion Application Link. We switched because HAL was being sunset.

Never participated in the initial setup.

In-house.

For the money, it's a decent tool. However, if the budget was larger I would have gone with a different tool

Look at how this product is sold to you. Ask yourself, am I getting everything that I need. Its more expensive to get the additional adapters after the fact.

We looked at ODI, Informatica, and DataStage. All three we had in-house. ODI was the better option and after dealing with SSIS for only a few months, we ended up using ODI.

SSIS is a very flexible solution that allows data to be generated through code or external software. As a result, we can create reproducible patterns and improve code quality.

Because of the code generation, code quality improved and the time to develop decreased. This led to a quicker and more agile development phase.

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.

Metadata management. A change in the metadata source cripples the whole ETL process, requiring each module to be manually reopened.

For the full version of the SQL Server, SSIS, SSAS and SSRS will come as additional features for free. Hence, my organization need not spend extra money for other ETL, reporting and analysis tools. This can give very good flexibility.

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.

SSIS can improve in handling different data sources like Salesforce connectivity, Oracle Cloud's connectivity, etc. Also, handling of the different data types will be a big challenge here; so expecting improvement in these areas.

There were no stability issues.

There were no scalability issues.

Technical support is very good.

Based on the client's requirements, we switched over to this solution.

The setup is straightforward.

We looked at Informatica and DataStage.

Don't worry, go ahead.

• 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)

• SSIS packages are stored in XML-like format; we keep them in SVN which makes it very easy to track changes
• Built-in dependency tool is really great; you can not only react to success/failure results, but you can evaluate any expression in the flow and execute (or bypass) any components based on the result of that expression. This gives you full control to build decision trees of any complexity

• Writing custom components and sharing them across multiple ETL streams is tricky and requires specialistic voodoo knowledge
• Make the GUI less eye-candy and more responsive; especially the scripting component needs some TLC regarding UI responsiveness

It's easy to deploy, you just need a simple file-copy mechanism that is sufficient for most deployment scenarios.

The good:

• Straightforward, intuitive, quick to learn
• Built-in debugger: variables, data viewers, breakpoints - everything you would expect from a modern software development tool
• Sleek, snappy UI
• Great flexibility with storing and deploying ETL components

The bad:

• Third party plug-ins may become incompatible with future versions of SSIS
• Upgrading is usually painful and time consuming despite what MS says
• Compatibility issues may arise when used with non-Microsoft technologies