DAT217x: Implementing ETL with SQL Server Integration Services
It was time to validate my ETL skills and challenge them with Microsoft ways of doing it :-)
What I liked from Microsoft is their no-nonsense, straight talking approach. Instead of pushing the use of SSIS data flow transformation (which most of us don't use anyway), they acknowledge that the best way of doing it is to code them in T-SQL Which suits me perfectly :-)
This is a brave, honest, down-to-earth attitude from Microsoft which contrasts with that of so many training providers who insist on making an exhaustive description of each of the SSIS transformations... completely ignoring the reality of commercial projects.
A greater focus could be put on the programmatic side of SSIS as this ETL relies significantly on VSTA and C# programming in both the control and the data flows. A good example of it was my latest project. Not to mention that we had to create a SSIS factory programmatically creating SSIS packages via the DTS API... using C# again. This would benefit from being covered by Microsoft.
I hope to be able to provide a light tutorial about how to programmatically create SSIS packages using the DTS API soon.
Subject covered by the DAT217x certification for now... :
- ETL with SQL programming
- Control flow
- Data flow
- Deployment and troubeshooting
So a bunch of very classic topics for SSIS with the originality of the emphasis on SQL programming, which would benefit being complemented by an emphasis on C# programming...