SSIS Reviews

Our primary use is as an ETL tool to move data across our various environments.

Its compatibility with Microsoft products has been very valuable to our company. It fits well within the architecture.

The interface is also very good. If users are familiar with Microsoft, then they'll be quite familiar with the interface.

We're in the process of switching to Informatica, and we need to work out data lineage and data profiling and to improve the quality of our data. SSIS, however, is not that compatible with Informatica. We managed to connect it to Informatica Metadata Manager, but we don't get good lineage, so we have to redo all our ETLs using the Informatica process in order to accept the proper data lineage.

As an example of what I'd like to see in SSIS is something that I think is very effective in Informatica. In Informatica PowerCenter, you define your sources and destinations once and after that, you can simply drag and drop into the designer. It's quite a nice feature. I don't know if SSIS has that feature, but if they don't, if they could allow the setup system configurations in one step and then offer drag and drop functionality, that would be extremely useful.

The solution is quite stable. I don't think we've had any issues.

In terms of scalability, we haven't tried big data because in our enterprise we have to use Informatica to connect to the dedupe. I can't say how well it reads with the file, but we've never had an issue. However, I can't speak to scalability because we're never really, really big data.

We've never had to contact technical support. Our developers would just use Google, and usually, they'll be able to find answers on the Internet.

The initial setup was straightforward. We've got quite a strong SQL experience in my team. We have about five people working on the solution, including Data engineers and BI developers. They're all admins.

We did the implementation ourselves. We have in-house database administrators. They usually set up all the services.

We're using the on-premises version of the solution.

My only recommendation to those considering implementation of the solution would be, if they want to check data lineage, they should set up the packages with a particular configuration that they would have to follow in order to get data lineage. If they were to start it from scratch, my recommendation would be just to follow the pattern to ensure data lineage.

I would rate this solution eight out of ten.

SSIS is a very flexible solution that allows data to be generated through code or external software. As a result, we can create reproducible patterns and improve code quality.

Because of the code generation, code quality improved and the time to develop decreased. This led to a quicker and more agile development phase.

It has the ability to be deployed into the cloud through Data Factory, and run completely as a software as a service in the cloud.

Metadata management. A change in the metadata source cripples the whole ETL process, requiring each module to be manually reopened.

We use SSIS to migrate from an old server to a new one and to add some services. 

Like most Microsoft products, SSIS is user-friendly and easy to use. 

Sometimes, there are compatibility issues with some features. From time to time, I also face issues when trying to migrate. If I misconfigure things when I use Snapshot, the migration will fail.It can take a long time to migrate huge amounts of data, so it would be nice if that could be faster. 

I have been using SSIS for less than two years.

If you want to scale SSIS, you might face performance issues. I'm not sure SSIS has robust scalability. 

I rate Microsoft support six out of 10. Interacting with Microsoft support is challenging because it takes a lot of time, and sometimes you need to repeat your issue over to different support engineers. It was easier to contact support in India because Microsoft had a local presence there, but getting support in Cameroon is difficult.  The response time is slower.

Neutral

Setting up SSIS is complex, and if you misconfigure something, you'll have problems during migration. I rate SSIS six out of 10 for ease of setup.

I have only used the free developer edition. 

I rate SSIS seven out of 10. This is the only product I've used so far, so I don't know how it compares to others. 

Movement of data and creation of files. ALl the typical things that you would have a ETL solution do. Data movements were in the millions and no calculations were completed. This means it was always a select * from where ever it was coming from and going to. Light translations like concatenation was being used. 

SSIS was easily adaptable to our group. It was cheaper than the other tools that we compared it to, however I feel that we got what we paid for.

The packaging and how it is organized is good for someone that really has never seen ETL before. 

Scalability of SSIS needs some improvement. Seems to get sluggish as soon as we hit a high volume of data.

Again it failed a lot and by a lot I mean every day. The failures were false alarms and caused many sleepless night for our company that I used to work for.

SSIS is good for smaller shops that don't really have a high volume of data.

I would rate the customer service as poor. 

We were using Hyperion Application Link. We switched because HAL was being sunset.

Never participated in the initial setup.

In-house.

For the money, it's a decent tool. However, if the budget was larger I would have gone with a different tool

Look at how this product is sold to you. Ask yourself, am I getting everything that I need. Its more expensive to get the additional adapters after the fact.

We looked at ODI, Informatica, and DataStage. All three we had in-house. ODI was the better option and after dealing with SSIS for only a few months, we ended up using ODI.

We use SSIS for transformation and migration.

The most valuable feature of SSIS is that it can handle real complex transformations.

SSIS should be made a little bit more intuitive and user-friendly because it needs an expert-level person to work on it.

I have been using SSIS for more than 10 years.

SSIS is a stable solution.

SSIS is a scalable solution.

The solution's initial setup is easy, but you'd need expert-level knowledge to work on it.

Overall, I rate SSIS an eight out of ten.

We've used the solution to create some data flows for one of the governmental sectors here in Saudi Arabia. I have created some applications for exporting data from Oracle databases to SQL databases.

I like that the data connections and all ODB connections are able to retrieve data from so many different databases. That's not only from SQL but also from other data sources as well. The data flow, which controls the data, including where to store it, is an excellent feature and is one of the most interesting points about SQL Integration Services.

The reporting on the solution is perfect. I didn't expect to see reporting features, but they are great.

More coding is needed to make it easier. It needs more development and enhancement. It also needs to offer different integration services for SQL. We had to do a lot fo the implementation ourselves, but more automating of the processes would make things easier.

Data migration needs to be simplified. I've found that it is really difficult to match, especially regarding data types. The old records often have different data types than we have now have in newer databases. Converting or transferring this kind of data is very important, and right now it's very difficult.

There were also not enough instructions from Microsoft in regard to this application or this technology, which can easily be improved upon.

The solution is stable, as long as you provide good infrastructure for the servers you're dealing with. That means making sure the SQL will be very stable as well as the SAN storage, the RAM, the CPU, and other components of the server. It is quite important.

The solution is very scalable. A client contacted me two months after deployment with a request to enlarge the services and add some more customization, which I managed to do easily. It's an enterprise-level solution, with the whole of Saudi Arabia using it for something called an E-Visa. People are applying for a visa to get into Saudi Arabia through this application. The number of users is quite high and worldwide.

We haven't needed the assistance of technical support so far.

Previously, we used the .NET framework, which we are still using as well.

The initial setup of the solution was easy. Deployment took less than two hours. You only need one person to implement and maintain it. At the same time, we do have another person who monitors the server-side.

I deployed the solution myself.

As a teacher, I worked with SSIS, so I previously used this solution. I didn't look at other options.

In terms of advice I would give in regard to implementing this product, I'd say to examine your business needs in relation to the solution. You need to make sure those are met before implementing it. A lot of companies use data filers and they already have existing databases. You need to make sure the solution you choose is able to deal with old databases of client records.

I would rate this solution ten out of ten. 

We are using it in our company and for our clients. I have experience in working with the whole data cycle, which includes data collection, transformation, and visualization. I have worked with the end-to-end process, and I have handled data integration, analysis, and visualization.

I specialize in Microsoft tools, and I have used SSIS for data integration and Power BI for data visualization. I have also worked with Tableau for data visualization and Talend for data integration.

The most valuable thing is that it is easy to connect with Microsoft tools. In Europe, particularly in France, a lot of companies use Excel, SQL Server, and other Microsoft tools, and it is easier to connect SSIS with Microsoft tools than other products.

It is also easy to learn and user-friendly. Microsoft is also good in terms of technical support. They have built a large community all over the world.

When I compare Talend and SSIS, Talend provides more features. With Talend, we can handle a large volume of data. Talend is usually used to treat a large volume of data, which makes it better than SSIS on the data side. 

Talend also has a very good Talend Management Console to schedule the jobs and do other things. It can also be easily connected to version control tools such as GitHub or SVN. The last time I used SSIS, it was connected through TSS for the Windows Console version. I am not sure it has been improved or not. If it is not improved, Microsoft should improve it. They should change the product to provide another console. 

Microsoft is good in terms of technical support. They provide 24-hour support. They have built a large community all over the world, and one can find easily the answer to an issue or problem by searching on the web.

Its installation wasn't my job. We have a team that specializes in infrastructure, and they install and set up the tool. When I was a student, I used to install it myself, and it wasn't really difficult, but I have not installed it on a professional site or for a company. 

Based on my experience and understanding, Talend comes out to be a little bit expensive as compared to SSIS. The average cost of having Talend with Talend Management Console is around 72K per region, which is much higher than SSIS.

SSIS works very well with Microsoft technologies, and if you have Microsoft technologies, it is not really expensive to have SSIS. If you have SQL Server, SSIS is free.

I would rate SSIS a six out of ten. I prefer Talend over SSIS.

We use this solution for extracting data from various databases and saving it in our data warehouse.

We use the on-premise deployment model.

My team is facing problems regarding the database connectors, which are not available. The MySQL connectors need to be purchased from outside vendors. They should provide connections for more SQL databases, free of charge.

The performance of this solution is not as good as other tools in the market. Compared to the same job is running in a different tool, it will take longer using SSIS.

This is a stable solution.

This solution is scalable.

The number of people I have using this solution depends on the size of the project. Normally, I need three to five ETL developers. Sometimes, if the project is big enough, then I will need more.

I have not contacted Microsoft Technical Support for this solution, although we have sometimes accessed the internet to research problems that we face.

In my previous company, I was leading a team who were working with Informatica. Here, they stick to Microsoft technologies and are unwilling to change.

The initial setup of this solution is very straightforward. In a few hours, everything was up and running.

The decision to use this particular solution includes many factors. Some companies do not want to purchase a license for another product because this one comes included with the database.

SSIS worked well for small or medium-sized Projects. For larger projects with huge data, I believe that you should search for another solution as you will need to do manual fine tuning. Additionally, some components such as SCD will show unexpected errors with huge data.

 As Microsoft is very slow in providing updates and enhancements to SSIS, I see that the future for Integration projects in Saudi Arabia goes towards other vendors products such as  Informatica powercenter, IBM DataStage, and Oracle ODI. 

Compared to other Integration tools, I would rate it a six out of ten.