Table of Contents

Editorial: ETL by Steve Jones

Real Life SSIS Project Experiences by Jamie Thomson Some advice and words of experince from an SSIS architect building packages in the real world.
	Normalized designs don’t have to be complex by Paul Neilson The second installment of the Data Architecture Column by Paul Nielsen. This time Paul shows why a normalized design does not need to be overly complex.
SSIS and Awkward Files by Steve Allen Many DBAs deal with strange formats of source data, requiring hours or days of cleanup to get things into a usable form for loading into a database. This article examines how SSIS can be used to extract data from a formatted report.
	Logging Features of SSIS by Vinod Kumar Keeping track of what is happening in our packages is crucial to properly debugging them and fixing issues. This article examines the events that are raised and how you can use them to log data about package execution.
Deploying SSIS Packages by Brian Knight The deployment of your ETL packages has become more complex in SQL Server 2005. MVP and SSIS guru Brian Knight discusses the steps you need to go through and your options for getting those packages set up and running on a server.
	Error and Event Handling in SQL Server Integration Services by James Luetkehoelter As packages become more complex and deal with many more events, loops, and connections, error handling becomes critical for debugging and tracking down issues. This article brings you a few techniques for adding event handling to your systems.
Disaster Recovery Planning for SSAS by Yaniv Mor Disaster recovery is a core skill for most DBAs, but Analysis Services databases are a different construct and it's rare for most DBAs to even work with one. That's no excuse for not being prepared and having a good backup plan and this article helps get you prepared for SSAS recovery.
	Fast Ranged Lookup in SSIS by Kristian Wedberg Is your lookup based task running slow in SSIS? This article brings you a possible solution with .NET and Script components that can dramatically speed up the performance of your package.
Generating Surrogate Keys for Type 1 and Type 2 Dimensions Using SSAS. by the Harsh Bhaiya

It’s the movement of data from one database to another in a data warehouse scenario. It sounds simple, and SQL Server 2005 tries to make it as easy as possible.

The problem is the tool they provide. SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (SSIS), is vastly less complex than other ETL tools, but still a programming environment that confounds many DBAs. After working with the DTS Designer in SQL Server 2000 for over 5 years, a switch to the Visual Studio-like Business Intelligence Design Studio brings on a huge learning curve for many administrators.

The last two years we’ve focused our final issue each year on data warehousing and business intelligence, and this year is no exception. With the complex environment of SSIS, we’ve gathered a number of articles from those using the product in the real world to help ease you into the new paradigm of ETL tools in SQL Server.

With SQL Server 2005 a year old in November, we have the experiences from a 9 month project as our feature article. Jamie Thomson has learned quite a few lessons with this new product and brings you the benefit of his experience to help you avoid some of the mistakes he made.

We also have articles on implementing logging in SSIS and deploying packages, both of which represent significant paradigm changes to the way that you work with packages. Each of these articles are from SQL Server MVPs that have gained a great deal of practical experience over the last year.

There are also a couple technical articles on actually using SSIS in real situations. One deals with awkward files, which I’m sure most everyone has been stuck loading. Here we see how to remove formatting from a report and just get the data. Speed is more and more of an issue as data sets grow and Kristian Wedberg brings us a look at how to speed up range lookups.

Disaster recovery is a backup and restore problem for your OLTP databases, but what about Analysis services? We have an article looking at backups and restores here and the second installment of our database design column from Paul Neilsen, author of the SQL Server Bible.

So sit back with a latte and enjoy this month’s SQL Server Standard.

Steve Jones