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Part IX: Business Intelligence
The Toolbox
To the left of your screen is the SSIS Toolbox, which is new in SSIS in SQL Server 2012 and
native to SSIS. It is no longer the Visual Studio toolbox with SSIS options as in previous
versions of SSIS. With the new toolbox, there is also a new button in the upper-right corner
of the SSIS Designer that makes the toolbox appear if it is obscured (see Figure 52-4.) You
can arrange the items on the toolbox by dragging tasks to different groupings now featured
on the toolbox, such as the Favorites group at the top. The default favorites are the Execute
SQL tasks and Data Flow tasks because these are indeed the two most commonly used tasks
for performing ETL with SSIS.FIGURE 52-4
The Toolbox button and the Variables button.If you are not in the Control Flow tab, click there now. Now look at the toolbox. Now click
the Data Flow tab beside the Control Flow tab. Now look at the toolbox again. Note the
entire contents of the toolbox changed as you moved from the Control Flow tab to the Data
Flow tab (see Figure 52-5 for comparing views of the Toolbox). The Control Flow is used to
call one or many tasks, one of which can be a data fl ow task. Data fl ow tasks actually per-
form changes on data and move data from sources to destinations. Data fl ow tasks are com-
prised of components. The control fl ow can be thought of as the mechanism to implement
an entire logical workfl ow, whereas the data fl ow is one task in a control fl ow.You can use items from the toolbox by dragging items from the toolbox onto the appropri-
ate design area and confi guring them. The Control Flow toolbox is available to the Control
Flow and Event Handler tabs, and the Data Flow toolbox is available to the Data Flow tab.Parameters and Variables
SSIS has always included variables and now includes parameters; both are used throughout
SSIS to assign values to properties inside packages. For instance, a variable has always been
able to be used to dynamically assign the value of a connection manager based on a list of
fi le names. Now with the Project Deployment Model, the value of that variable could also be
passed to a Package Parameter in an Execute Package task. Parameters are the replacements
for confi gurations and are used with the Project Deployment Model. Variables and param-
eters behave similarly and are confi gured in much the same manner. The differences are in
scope, exposure to change, and properties.Properties Window
Most objects inside SSIS have a properties window, with confi gurable properties specifi c to
that element. You can determine Property values at run time through the evaluation of anc52.indd 1160c52.indd 1160 7/31/2012 10:29:25 AM7/31/2012 10:29:25 AM
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