Book recommendation for SSIS/ETL process 1

[Goodie666]

Hello,

I have some fairly good knowledge of SQL Server 2000/2005. However, I am yet to play with SSIS which I want to use to try out some ETL/DW things for work. I was wondering if anybody could point me out to a good, practical book for ETL that's SSIS-centric? I've been searching at amazon etc. but there aren't many reviews/ratings for these. I already have the SQL 2005 toolkit and the classical dw toolkit. I'm really more looking into the SSIS part of things.

Many thanks and sorry if this has been asked before,

Greg

 

[MDXer]

Wiley has a DW Book targeted to the MS platform done by Kimball and his group. Something Like "The Microsoft Data Warehouse toolkit"

Most of the books will Teach you to build a package but in my opinion fall short in what I would call designing a package.

I make the difference based on a package that needs to do X like everything there will be a number of ways to do it but only a couple ways that will really be optimized and correctly utilize resources. For this information I would suggest reading the numerous SSIS optimization whitepapers that exist and can be accessed from a google search on "SSIS Optimization".

To really design a package in my opinion you need to understand how the SSIS process works and what and how the various tasks do and why. Quick example is the Merge Join and lookup Tasks. Both can do the same thing but one will typically out perfrom the other .

Remember there is a Forum dedicated to SSIS.

Microsoft SQL Server: Integration Services (SSIS)

 

[Goodie666]

Hi,

Sorry I had not seen the forum. In the end I picked up the wrox book. I already have the Microsoft DW toolkit but it does not help learning the tool, rather it gives ideas on how to handle things but like you said, you have to know how it actually is done in SSIS to perform the task.

Thanks,

Greg

 

[MDXer]

In my opinion the wrox books are good to teach you what the various tasks do and how to implement them. They really fail in how to properly use the various tasks and how to order your tasks.

To really gain the knowledge of how and why in SSIS search topics like
SSIS Execution Trees (Understanding this is huge into building efficient packages)
Buffers (Again crucial in performance and resource allocation)

Non Blocking, Partially Blocking and Fully Blocking transforms know which each is and the effect they have is huge.

Good Luck