Advantages of using SSIS packages over stored procedures? [closed]

Answer 1

I have seen some tremedous performance gains from using SSIS, it is especially good if you have stored procedures that are using linked servers as this uses more processing power and linked servers tend to pull over the whole table into memory before limiting the rows needed by a join. We had a stored procedure that was taking 7 + hours to run, I broke this down into data from each server, then set up a local datasource for each in SSIS allowing processing to take place locally for each datasource as apposed to via linked server, the job now takes 6 minutes to run, I would say that is a massive gain.

Caralyn

Answer 2

For data transfers between SQL servers use SSIS above SPs You can easily face a factor 10 improvement as mentioned above We went from 6-7 hours transfers to a more manageable time frame by embedding the SP in an SSIS package

On a side note: SSIS is basically a bunch of XML files which can be manipulate/used in different ways (eg for documentation)

Answer 3

If your ETL is mostly E and L, with very little T, and if you can write your SPs so they don't rely on cursors, then going the SP-only route is probably fine.

For more complex processes, particularly those that involve heavy transforms, slowly changing dimensions, data mining lookups, etc, SSIS has three advantages.

First, it manages memory very efficiently, which can result in big performance improvements compared to T-SQL alone.

Second, the graphical interface lets you build large, complex and reliable transforms much more easily than hand-crafted T-SQL.

And third, SSIS lets you more easily interact with additional external sources, which can be very handy for things like data cleansing.

Answer 4

To small projects, if you have a solid sql skills, and a business requirement understanding, go ahead!

Otherwise, if you will face complexes data extraction, heavy transformation tasks. SSIS or another ETL tool will suffice.

cheers

Answer 5

I've been working with SQL Server since version 6.5 - that's a long time! And from my experience most ETL is simple enough that T-SQL works perfectly fine and not only works but works very well - fast, reliable, simple structured programming. I believe anything that can be done in SSIS can be done in T-SQL by someone who knows what they're doing.

Most people who are heavy pro-SSIS, again in my experience, are inexperienced developers who have grown up with graphical tools and don't really know how to program.

Answer 6

I would say it depends some on what you are doing. However, from my experience the room for improvement with SSIS packages is tremendous. We saw 10 fold improvements in our data warehouse environment when we took some of the heavy hitting stored procedures and put them in SSIS packages. The memory utilization of SSIS (in this situation anyways) made all of the difference.

I want to reiterate that it is important to know what you are doing. For example, a SQL statement will usally outperform a SSIS data-flow when the data transform is table-to-table on the same server.

The best bet it to pick a SP or two and create them in SSIS and test them both.

Seems like the answer for all SQL questions start with, It depends...