With the introduction of SQL Server Integration Services in the SQL Server 2005 release, Microsoft finally possessed a tool that could perform ETL (Extraction, Transformation & Loading) tasks. The predecessor of SQL Server Integration Services, DTS – Data Transformation Services, already had the capability to Extract and Load data coming from several environments, but was lacking the often quite important "transform" functionality.
With SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), a real ETL solution was thus added to the Microsoft BI portfolio. Now it is possible to create packages that for instance can perform look ups or can implement Slowly Changing dimension functionality.
Today SQL Server Integration Services is recognized as an enterprise-ready product:
- Easily deployable to several servers
- Supporting configuration files that make that one package can be used in several scenario's and in several environments
- Encrypting packages makes them secure when containing sensitive information
- The use of checkpoints makes it robust and restart-able
- Standard loggingis available out of the box