Professional Microsoft® SQL Server® Analysis Services 2008 with MDX

Chapter 19. Integration Services

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS, or Integration Services) 2008 is the improved version of SSIS 2005. It is similar to what used to be called Data Transformation Services (or DTS for short) in SQL Server 2000. Like the names suggest, this service is all about integrating data from disparate data sources to one or more destinations with the ability to apply transformations on the data based on business requirements. SQL Server Integration Services is a collection of utilities that helps you to Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) data from heterogeneous data sources to one or more data destinations, apply transformations to clean the data before loading them to data destinations, bulk load data to OLTP and OLAP systems, perform predictive analytics with the Analysis Services Data Mining Services, and automate administrative tasks on relational and OLAP databases. Integration Services is not just about integrating data from and into databases; it helps you to perform operations on files ranging from simple file search operations on disk to transferring files using FTP. It also allows you to write managed code and execute it as a script, and define and automate your complex business processes as routine/scheduled tasks. Finally, the SSIS extensible object model allows you to build your own custom tasks and transform components that can be added to the SSIS platform.

An Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) is a data warehouse that serves an entire company ...