Does anyone have any good SSIS Best-Practices tips and suggestions? [closed]

Answer 1

see this post, think this guy has covered most of it.

http://moeens.com/?s=best+practices&x=0&y=0#/2010/12/ssis-best-practices/

Answer 2

Here is a list of easy to implement performance best practices and some development best practices

Answer 3

For pretty large packages, or whenever possible, use non-container container to help a future reader of the packages understand the package easily. A non-container is just like any other container except that it has no programming logic behind it. It just helps to group related items together for easier understanding of the package. The concept behind it is that a human mind cannot take in more than 5-6 items together.

Answer 4

There is a 4000-character limit to the DT_WSTR (Unicode string) data type used by SSIS. Since expressions are converted to DT_WSTR, they also cannot exceed 4000 characters.

You'll get an error if you exceed the limit at design time. However, you will not receive any obvious warnings or errors if you do so at run time. The operation will fail silently, and the expression may be evaluated incorrectly.

Note: this does not mean that strings or SSIS variables cannot exceed 4000 characters. The limitation only applies to expressions and other places that DT_WSTR is used. For a good explanation of this, take a look at:

http://blogs.conchango.com/jamiethomson/archive/2009/05/27/4000-character-limit-in-ssis.aspx

Here's an example that reproduces the issue:

1. Create an SSIS string variable named testVariable.
2. Assign the variable a long value in a script task (5000 characters, for instance). The assignment should succeed.
3. Create a second task and connect the two tasks using a precedence constraint. Set the evaluation operation to "Expression" and set the expression to @testVariable != "".

Even though the variable is not empty, the constraint will incorrectly evaluate to False because the expression exceeds 4000 characters. However, this will not cause any errors and the package will not fail.

If you notice strange behavior in your SSIS logic, take a look at your expressions and ensure that they don't exceed 4000 characters when evaluated.

Answer 5

Additionally, use the properties Version, Version Description as much as you can. Although there is a package history (Right click and choose View History) this adds an additional layer of documentation (annotations are good but are not that practical due to time constraints). Version / Version Description helps since the version # in the property can be coordinated well with ETL Design Documentation Revision History log.