SSIS Reviews and Pricing

Dhruv Singh

Senior Architect (Data and AI) at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jul 26, 2023

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Developer-friendly platform for data extraction, transformation, and loading

Pros and Cons

"The solution is easy to use and developer friendly."

"There are a lot of things that Microsoft could improve in relation to SSIS. One major problem we faced was when attempting to move some Excel files to our SQL Server. The Excel provider has a limitation that prevents importing more than 255 columns from a particular Excel file to the database. This restriction posed a significant issue for us."

What is our primary use case?

The solution is primarily used for the ETL process. Another use case is transforming data from one format to another format.

What is most valuable?

The solution is easy to use and developer friendly. Many customizations can be performed with a good grasp of the C# language.

What needs improvement?

There are a lot of connectors that are not available right now. Some third-party connectors and adapters are available, but not directly from Microsoft data, which is an issue. And in terms of maturity, it is a good product. But, again, the way the industry uses these ETL tools, SSIS is not preferred because of many factors. Microsoft is no longer promoting the tool itself and is more focused on its cloud framework. That could be one of the reasons, but a smaller company prefers to SSIS because it is usually free with the SQL Server.

There are a lot of things that Microsoft could improve in relation to SSIS. One major problem we faced was when attempting to move some Excel files to our SQL Server. The Excel provider has a limitation that prevents importing more than 255 columns from a particular Excel file to the database. This restriction posed a significant issue for us, and as a workaround, we had to convert the files to CSV format before importing them. While it involved some manual effort, it was not a big deal since it was a one-time task. These are some small areas of improvement. There's one tool, a very famous and popular tool among banking clients, that supports this kind of data load in SSIS.

Moreover, in the case of a pivot, which is available in your Excel, there are a lot of ways an Excel file can be created, and you can have a favorite kind of data format in Excel. Importing data of that kind into SSIS can be problematic, and it cannot be done easily. It requires writing some sort of custom code. These basic issues need improvements.

However, I don't think Microsoft would be willing to make any modifications to the existing capabilities provided by the tool. The reason is that there are already many third-party vendors offering similar functionality through their plugins.

For example, you can install these plugins within your Visual Studio, and they provide an extra set of features integrated into Visual Studio and SSIS. Perhaps that's why Microsoft has stopped actively improving upon certain features. But, again, this introduces an overhead in terms of development cost. To access additional tools or features, I have to purchase them from another vendor and then implement them.

Moreover, if something is not directly supported by Microsoft and relies on third-party tools, it can become a significant issue, as I'll have to depend on those vendors, which poses another challenge.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using SSIS for more than 12 years.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is pretty mature.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have never faced any significant issues as long as your underlying hardware has a good amount of resources.

Scalability depends on the kind of workload and implementation you are giving to SSIS.

It is best suited for small and medium. However, for enterprises, it depends on the specific implementation they require. Real-time scenarios might not be the best fit, but for batch processing, it can still be suitable.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten. It essentially gives most of the small and medium use cases, you will be easily able to implement and scale SSIS.

How are customer service and support?

It is very difficult to get support from Microsoft. They will support you till they're getting paid. Microsoft is not interested in support in case of a small issue or help. It is very difficult to get support directly from Microsoft.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

When it comes to ease of use, SSIS has an advantage over a tool called Informatica, which is also an ETL tool I've worked with. SSIS is more developer-friendly, even though Informatica provides GUI support. However, SSIS has a wider range of connectors compared to Informatica, making it easier to perform various transformations within the server itself.

On the other hand, Informatica's repository feature is quite robust. SSIS has a repository feature but doesn't have its own implementation. To use a repository feature like DFS, Azure DevOps, or SVN, you need to purchase extra licenses and integrate them into your solution.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was pretty simple. To install the SQL Server, select the feature during installation on the same server. In the case of a separate server, opt for SSIS service installation instead of installing the SQL Server, and it will be pretty quick. You can have your server up and running within ten minutes.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is economical. It comes free with the SQL Server. You don't have to worry about the pricing as long as you're installing both services on the same server.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten. There is room for improvement.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Vichitra Mohan

Technical Service Team Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Nov 29, 2022

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Excellent reporting services

Pros and Cons

"SSIS' most valuable feature is its reporting services."

"SSIS sometimes hangs, and there are some problems with servers going down after they've been patched."

What is most valuable?

SSIS' most valuable feature is its reporting services.

What needs improvement?

SSIS sometimes hangs, and there are some problems with servers going down after they've been patched.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using SSIS for over eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

SSIS' stability is fairly good, but there's room for improvement.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was pretty simple.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

SSIS is fairly well-priced - I would rate it at four out of five.

What other advice do I have?

SSIS is best suited for small and medium companies. I would rate SSIS eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner

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reviewer1436226

Manager, Data & Intelligence Group, Technical at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Jun 6, 2022

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A very user-friendly UI with good adaptability to multiple data sources

Pros and Cons

"The UI is very user-friendly."

"Options for scaling could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

This is an infrastructure tool and our primary use case is for data warehouse integration.

How has it helped my organization?

The solution has enabled us to perform tasks more quickly.

What is most valuable?

The UI is very user-friendly and I like that the solution has the ability to adapt to multiple data sources.

What needs improvement?

I haven't found too many successful scaling options and that's something that could be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using this solution for over 10 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution could be more scalable.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment took a day and we did it in-house.

What other advice do I have?

I rate this solution eight out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Anil Jha

Director D&A at Iris Software Inc.

May 30, 2022

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Integrates well with SQL servers, but technical support needs improvement

Pros and Cons

"SSIS integrates well with SQL servers and Microsoft products."

"I would like to see more features in terms of the integration with Azure Data Factory."

What is most valuable?

SSIS integrates well with SQL servers and Microsoft products.

From a cost perspective, it's a cheaper option than other ETL tools.

Also, it has a lot of in-built transformation, and it's easy to learn.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see more features in terms of the integration with Azure Data Factory.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've worked with this solution for about four years, on both the on-premises and cloud solutions. We had around 3000 plus users.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's a stable solution.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is not efficient, and I've had to search on the web to solve the problems.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I worked on PowerCenter.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward and is not complex. It took about a day to install.

You would need two to three technical staff for the deployment and maintenance of the solution.

What about the implementation team?

We used an integrator for the deployment process.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

SSIS is a cheaper option compared to the cost of other ETL tools.

What other advice do I have?

SSIS is a cheaper solution, and I would recommend it.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate it at seven.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Dominic Mackenzie

Data Architect at AMP Capital

May 20, 2022

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It's easy to integrate data from various sources

Pros and Cons

"SSIS is an easy way to do data integration from various data sources. It doesn't matter whether it's a database, flat files, XML, or Web API. It can talk to the and join them all together."

"It's difficult to refactor SSIS. It gets cumbersome to reuse the solution."

What is our primary use case?

We use SSIS to integrate investment data we collect from different places into our portfolio management system. We get results out of portfolio management systems and integrate that into the downstream back-office, risk, and regulatory reporting systems. All the developers at my company use it.

What is most valuable?

SSIS is an easy way to do data integration from various data sources. It doesn't matter whether it's a database, flat files, XML, or Web API. It can talk to the and join them all together.

What needs improvement?

It's difficult to refactor SSIS. It gets cumbersome to reuse the solution.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used SSIS off and on for maybe 15 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

SSIS is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

SSIS scales well

How are customer service and support?

I've never had any issues with SSIS, but I'm not responsible for managing the solution at an enterprise level.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I've used free solutions or ones that allow you to create your own. I've used free ones like KNIME, etc. The open-source solutions have similar features, but I haven't found one with the same ease of use.

How was the initial setup?

I've never had to install SSIS at an enterprise level, but the installation is straightforward for development purposes. It takes less than an hour. However, installing it at the enterprise level would require a lot more configuration, tuning, etc. I'll leave that to the experts.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We pay for a license, and I think SSIS is priced about right.

What other advice do I have?

I rate SSIS nine out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

reviewer1194996

Senior Analyst at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 16, 2022

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Getting, extracting, converting, and dumping data doesn't require much effort because we can do everything in the user interface

Pros and Cons

"You can get data from any data source with SSIS and dump it to any outside source. It is helpful. Getting, extracting, converting, and dumping data doesn't require much effort because we can do everything in the user interface. You drag and drop, then give the required input. It's intuitive."

"Sometimes we need to connect to AWS to get additional data sources, so we have to install some external LAN and not a regular RDBMS. We need external tools to connect. It would be great if SSIS included these tools. I'd also like some additional features for row indexing and data conversion."

What is our primary use case?

We have data that needs to be migrated. There is also a scan inventory. We create web data, pull it, search it, and then find answers and report stakeholders. So for this process, we use the SSIS.

What is most valuable?

You can get data from any data source with SSIS and dump it to any outside source. It is helpful. Getting, extracting, converting, and dumping data doesn't require much effort because we can do everything in the user interface. You drag and drop, then give the required input. It's intuitive.

What needs improvement?

Sometimes we need to connect to AWS to get additional data sources, so we have to install some external LAN and not a regular RDBMS. We need external tools to connect. It would be great if SSIS included these tools. I'd also like some additional features for row indexing and data conversion.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using SSIS for about four and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

If you run SSIS from the local system, it will lag, but it will work properly if you host on the cloud somewhere. It's a headache every time you run this locally.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Almost 10 percent of our users work with SSIS. It's more than a hundred.

How are customer service and support?

We haven't had that many problems. I have interacted with Microsoft support for some things, but it was a few minor issues. And with the updated VPA, it has been clear. I was satisfied with the support. We don't need support for these types of issues. We don't need to contact the support team or stop our business.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is never a complex process because the interface is user-friendly. If you are working with complex situations, then it can get complicated. We have a DBA team to handle the deployment. We must follow a process to deploy, so we need to get approval whenever there is a change. It's not easy for us, but it's still good, and it doesn't take much time.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

SSIS is on the cheaper side. In terms of value for the money, rivals are offering more database formats and cost processing, so SQL is lagging somewhat.

What other advice do I have?

I rate SSIS eight out of 10. I recommend it.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner

ChitraGovindasamy

BI Consultant at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Jan 29, 2021

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Variety of transformations, good SQL integration, and allows C# scripting

Pros and Cons

"The script component is very powerful, things that you cannot normally do, is feasible through C#."

"The solution could improve on integrating with other types of data sources."

What is most valuable?

Some of the valuable features I have found with this solution has been the variety of transformations that are possible and it works well with SQL servers. The majority of our clients that I worked for, their whole systems of data is using SQL server which has worked better for them.

The script component is very powerful, things that you cannot normally do, is feasible through C#. If you can write a script you can import it through the Script Task.

What needs improvement?

The solution could improve on integrating with other types of data sources. We had issues with connecting to Oracle, it did not do as good of a job as it did with SQL servers.

In my experience, more efficiency is needed when it comes to dealing with huge volumes of data. However, this is also dependant on the server capacity.

In an upcoming release, they should update the features to facilitate efficient data transfers.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for approximately 10 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have not experienced any behavioural differences with the operations of the solution, it is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We typically implement the solution for enterprise-size companies.

How was the initial setup?

The installation was easy.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It would be beneficial if the solution had a less costly cloud offering.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Informatica and Talent, are two options I am currently evaluating.

What other advice do I have?

Customers have moved on pass SSIS and use Azure Data Factory, Databricks or something similar. We have a few of our customers looking to moving on to Informatica or Talent. This is how I was led to itcentralstation.com, to learn more about SSIS and how it was compared to Informatica.

I have never had a situation where a particular transformation was not possible in SSIS. We have always been able to meet the demands of our need with SSIS.

I rate SSIS an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. partner

GaryM

Data Architect at World Vision

Aug 19, 2024

SSIS 2016 - The good, the bad, and the ugly

Pros and Cons

"Built in reports show package execution and messages. Logging can also be customized so only what is needed is logged. There is also an excellent logging replacement called BiXpress that provides both historical and real-time monitoring which is more efficient and much more robust than the built-in logging capabilities. And none of this requires custom coding to make it useful unlike many other ETL tools."

"You have to write push down join & lookup SQL to the database yourself via stored procedures or use of the SQL Task to get very high performance. That said, this is a common complaint for nearly all ETL tools on the market and those that offer an alternative such as Informatica offer them at a very expensive add-on price."

Sql Server Integration Services (SSIS) 2016 Review

SSIS 2019 - the Good the Bad, and the Ugly

SSIS is a unique ETL tool for a number of reasons. Most shops already own it but may treat it as a free utility rather than as an enterprise ETL tool. Which is ironic given it is superior to many of the supposed enterprise-class tools in a number of areas. The lack of respect in our industry is likely due to immature beginnings in its former "DTS" days and because it comes bundled "free" with Sql Server. But don't let that fool you into thinking it can't compete with the expensive ETL tools. I've used many ETL tools over the years and I'll take SSIS over any of them. I've now used SSIS exclusively for close to a decade and have no regrets.

SSIS is extremely flexible, extensible and integrated with many other Microsoft tools and a multitude of add-ons - both for purchase and for free. It's come a very long ways since its DTS days. It's incredibly cost effective, easy to learn the basics quickly (although like all ETL tools requires the traditional learning curve to get good at) and has an immense user base. There are also endless bits of quality shareware available that seamlessly plug-in and a wide variety of low priced vendor supported add-on products to fill in any out-of-the-box gaps (see my other review of MellissaData Data Quality MatchUp for SSIS). And if you can't find something you need and you know how to code C#.net you can extend the tool yourself. So unlike any other tool on the market, there's always a way to make something work with SSIS.

The Good...very good

How is free for a price? (for anyone running enterprise or BI editions of SqlServer)
Limitless Extensibility

This comes from the fact that SSIS is merely Visual Studio code and comes with templates to add your own custom components. A large variety of pre-built shareware is available at the codeplex.com website and vendors such as MellisaData and Pragmatic Works provide sophisticated add-on components from advanced realtime monitoring to state-of-the-art data quality plug-ins. BIML shareware allows for automated ETL code generation based on XML templates. Some of the shareware available on Codeplex are very high value such as the MultipleHash component providing very sophisticated hashing to support CDC and SCD operations. If you don't like out of the box functionality (such as the SCD wizard which is largely worthless) then there's likely a worthwhile supported replacement by some vendor for a reasonable price. There's built in support for CDC from many database sources such as Sql Server and Oracle for no added charge which is unheard of among their competitors.

Adding plug-ins such as BiXpress, Task Factory and DocXpress from Pragmatic Works are relatively inexpensive tools that do some really amazing things. BiXpress is a MUST for providing real-time and historical monitoring of ETL including tracking package parameter and local variable value changes both in real-time and historical. I highly recommend MelissaData Matchup for SSIS - you'll never see any other data quality tool as easy to use as that one which seamlessly integrates with SSIS.

Common Development Environment - Visual Studio

Unlike any other ETL tool - if you learn Visual Studio, you gain familiarity with an entire toolset. Its navigation and project organization is common to all other .net development. Along with Visual Studio you get all the source control plug-ins inherent with the tool such as TFS (aka. TFVC in VSO which is cloud based and free!), and Git.

Job/package Parameters

2012 Version introduced very flexible parameter capability superior to most all other ETL tools. Project and package parameters integrate seamlessly into Sql Agent to provide step-level dynamic change runtime values such as source/target connections. They of course can be used with many other job schedulers albeit a little less tightly integrated.

Endless Add-ons

Either via shareware or purchased products. Github provides a huge amount of free shareware code - some of which is very high quality. Vendors such as KingswaySoft and PragmaticWorks and many others provide multitude of inexpensive add-ons from adapters to enhanced components to connect to just about everything. I use SSIS to connect to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Oracle Netsuite, on-prem Oracle, hosted source using SOAP calls, and Azure SqlServer as well as flat file loads and on-prem SqlServers.

Logging

Built in reports show package execution and messages. Logging can also be customized so only what is needed is logged. There is also an excellent logging replacement called BiXpress that provides both historical and real-time monitoring which is more efficient and much more robust than the built-in logging capabilities. And none of this requires custom coding to make it useful unlike many other ETL tools.

Extremely Large User Community

Just google if you don't know the answer - from youtube to blogs there's an incredible amount of information out there about this tool. I suspect far more than any other ETL tool.

List of good features...

Respectable Performance and includes a balanced distributor that allows for endless parallelism of data flow pipes
Robust historical repository reporting provided in the included SSISDB repository
Includes connectivity to large variety of sources/targets
Built in CDC for multiple sources (formerly a purchased add-on from Attunity). This feature alone is often 6 figure add-on from other vendors.
High value/low cost Data Quality component integrations from MelissaData
Sophisticated breakpoint debug capability including inside VB and C# scripts
Integration with Change Control Software (e.g. TFS, Subversion, Git)
Fully integrated with Sql Server Agent for scheduling including dynamic job step parameters
Integrates with SSAS tabular and cubes as well as Data Mining algorithms
Includes data profiling task and wizard
High level of sophistication with source/target drivers
Free Attunity OLEDB drivers for higher performance connections to Oracle and Teradata
Multiple plug-ins for interfacing with applications such as Salesforce.com and Dynamics CRM
Longevity of the tool and consistent support and enhancements by Microsoft
Full power of either VB or C# script tasks to accomplish pretty much anything that isn't already included

The Bad

No direct support for push-down of joins

You have to write push down join & lookup SQL to the database yourself via joins in the data flow source to get very high performance. That said, this is a common complaint for nearly all ETL tools on the market and those that offer an alternative such as Informatica offer them at a very expensive add-on price and even then don't work for all join situations. (My best practice is complex joins go into views of the data lake/landing area tables anyways so the queries are easily audible but I know there are deferring opinions here.)

Slowly Changing Dimension (SCD) Wizard has poor performance

No surprise here as this is a common issue with ETL SCD wizards. Requires custom/shareware enhanced wizard or one from 3rd party vendor to get good performance. This begs the question why Microsoft can't come up with a better wizard since it's pretty straight forward to code a dynamic merge as a workaround and someone wrote a much better shareware version. Pragmatic Works also sells a much better and supported version in their toolkit along with many other tools.

Here's a list of constraints or potential gotchas...

Expression Language primitive and inconsistent with other languages. The workaround is to use the script task that allows either VB or C# but using those inside of a dataflow severely degrades performance.
Limited native scalability - Direct support for multiple server/clustered installation/processing requires at least the 2016 version but I haven't yet tested this feature so I'm leaving this in as a constraint for now.
Flat file connectors are overly difficult to build and maintain - Changes in columns and file layout is cumbersome and problematic. Datatype detection is almost always wrong requiring manual settings for every column. Flat files that use quoted fields between delimiters don't work if a quote is included in the data - it can't find the field alignment and the data flow errors out. I know of no simple solution for this as it errors in the source before you can apply a cleansing function to it.
Default datatypes not always correct when reading from views. This can cause syntax errors in data flows and components such as union all. Workarounds are to explicitly convert in datatype conversion task or override the default metadata datatype.
Previous metadata often does not disappear when changing targets/sources. Tasks have the tendency to hold onto previous datatypes and lengths and not automatically pick up the changes. The tool cannot automatically adapt to metadata changes like some tools such as ADF.
Inconsistent data types for variables and parameters. Start with one set of datatypes coming from a database, combine with a completely different set of internal variable datatypes, another set with either Vb or C# variable datatypes when using script tasks, another set of datatypes when passing parameters to stored procedures, and yet another when applying SSIS expressions...and it's quite the mess in the end. You get it figured out eventually but it leaves you scratching your head asking why it has to be so difficult when it's all the same vendor's product. The C# and VB and database datatypes are a given but why can't the others follow one of those?
Confusing context/scope for variables to watch when running multiple levels of parent/child execution. Debug mode shows all of them at the same time and the context for each set is not intuitively obvious. For example you get list of each parent and child in the hierarchy of calls and its easy to mistake which package the variables relate to when viewing in the debugger.

10. Logging significantly impacts performance. You can customize logging however starting with 2016 version.

The Ugly

What's the future for SSIS?

Its only cloud capability is running it under the covers within SSIS-IR from ADF. The only decent monitoring tool for SSIS is BiXpress and it has now been deprecated! The writing is on the wall folks. The problem is ADF isn't architected to do a lot of small tasks efficiently like SSIS is. I have no way of testing this but based on my experience an attempt to re-engineer all our SSIS processes into ADF is likely to take our daily 6 hour process and turn it into couple of weeks. ADF just takes to long to move small amounts of data around. That leaves us limping by with SSIS and ADF in combination until such point someone provides a viable cloud alternative.

SSDT is still 32 bit!

Yup...and you thought this was the year 2022 and everything is 64 bit. Apparently Microsoft doesn't know that yet. Combine that with its tendency to not release memory and its not difficult to hit out of memory errors when doing SSIS development. But wait! There is finally hope on the horizon…VS 2022 is 64 bit now but no word on when SSDT/SSIS will be released for 2022.

So...

Here we go with more not-so-pretty "features"...

Development environment and deployment wizard becomes unstable with larger projects

It is not unusual to get "out of memory" errors IF you use the default deployment wizard which is 32 bit on even medium sized projects. However there is a 64 bit version that eliminates this issue but you have to realize that using it isn't the default.

SSDT (the development tool) keeps grabbing more memory as you open new solutions so you have to exit at least once a day to free up memory. SSDT is unstable if you open more than about 30 packages at a time (such as when you're applying framework code to a bunch of packages - you have to limit how many you do at a time).

Containers that help group tasks have several very annoying bugs. For example, sometimes if you attempt to resize the container it will make the diagram tool move about wildly and out of control. A task within a container sometimes becomes detached and you can't get it back into the container. This is common with sequence containers when you try to add a new task. The new task seemingly disappears but is actually behind the container. The workaround is to cut and paste it in but you may start to scream before you figure that out.

And if that's not enough, here's a very special feature for you to enjoy...If you change the "show annotation" on a precedence constraint when the constraint is using a package parameter, Pennywise the clown slaps you in the face, laughs and then SSDT dies. There is fortunately a workaround. You can make the constraint something generic like 1==1, change the show annotation again and then put the real constraint into it. In the end you walk away with satisfaction knowing you found a way to slap it back.

Prior to 2012 not recommended!

Prior versions had many issues including debugging instability with large parent-child package call volumes and .com locking issues when running many parallel threads. It's largest drawback however was it was WAY overly complicated with its configuration XML file method of passing data between packages. That said, it was still superior to ETL tools that require passing parameters via just files (such as Informatica)! But these issues were resolved with 2012 when they introduced project and package parameters and they also improved memory management for parent/child package calls.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

GaryMData Architect at World Vision

Report as inappropriate

May 5, 2020

The insight into running packages comes from the BiXpress Audit and Notification frameworks which are an extra cost per developer. But it's invaluable. And I would argue it gives you insight into what's running like no other tool on the market can. Its as if you were running a debugger in production as you can watch data values change in variables as it runs and data counts as the data flows run. And it handles all the error handling for you which is massive. It sends you formatted and informative email or text when something dies with where it died and why. There is some performance cost but you can turn off SSIS logging so its basically swapping logging methods and BiXpress is SO far superior to the built in logging of SSIS.

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