SSIS is it too OBTUSE?
I must say that it appears that SSIS does everything but slice bread for you. However it is also very OBTUSE. Yes I am yelling that. It seems like everything that I do with it is incredibly difficult. I know that part of the problem is just learning the tool.
The nice thing about DTS 2000 was it ease of use. If I needed something more complex, then I preformed some magic with datasets and XSLT. I currently have a 2003 project that does just that - a data mapper that uses datasets and XSLT to get the job done.
I was thinking about migrating this project to use SSIS however I am not so sure that makes sense. Migrate the code and keep the ease of ultimate control. Or hand it off to a drag and drop that will take longer to mimic the same behavior and take control away.
I know that SSIS allows you to do many great and wonderful things but the one thing that it is severely lacking in is ease of use. It would be nice if they included in SSIS a few quick and dirty abilities. Perhaps an example will help.
I was trying to transfer an Oracle database to SQL Server 2005 using SSIS but was unsuccessful after many attempts. After two days I gave up in frustration. I then used DTS and SQL Server 2000 to get the Oracle Data. From there I used SSIS to get the SQL Server 2000 data into SQL Server 2005. The latter taking less than an hour.
- John
