MRA39 Assignment 04 August, 05, 2021
SQL Server Integration Services
1. Executive Summary
Business Intelligence (BI) allows the organisation to ask and answer questions about their data.
Having accurate data would assist an organisation about making informed decisions whether it be
at an executive, managerial or operational level. The extract, load and transform (ETL) process is
a critical part of BI as it allows for the gathering of data from multiple and various data sources.
This paper highlights the ETL process, using Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services a
propriety tools licensed by Microsoft. The SSIS software was used to migrate and transform data
from a transactional database environment to a data warehouse database. Furthermore, this tool
was used to do extractions, transformations and loading of data from a Text file into a data
warehouse dataset.
Looping through Text files and logging were also explored and the successful testing as well as
the negative testing of the SSIS packages.
2. Introduction
This paper will examine the extract, transform and load (ETL) process used in assignment 04 to
extract data from a relational database into a data warehouse using MS SQL Server Integration
Services (SSIS). Additionally, this report presents the steps taken to complete the Microsoft SQL
Server Integration Services tutorial lessons one, two three and four.
SSIS is a powerful enterprise BI tool which is commonly used to perform ETL operations, further
more SSIS would provide many enhancements to the ETL process including scheduling and
automation.
3. Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services
MS SSIS is a visual tool used to perform a variety and many functions of the ETL process,
including the ability to connect to multiple data sources and providing the ability execute tasks
individually and as a whole making the troubleshooting process for ETL tasks more efficient.
Tok, et al., (2012) describes SSIS as an essential tool for the enterprise that would allow the
organization to turn data into a meaningful decision tool as data is often found in various formats
and in disparate systems. Tok, et al., (2012) further argues that in the absence of an enterprise tool
such as SSIS the quality of the ETL process would be severely diminished as the data resulting
from ETL tools are often used to provide analytic insights
Assignment 4 consisted of two parts:
Part 1: ETL Process from relations DB to data warehouse DB
During Part 1 of the Assignment, SSIS was used to create an SSSIS solution in MS Visual Studio
and using the SSIS graphical user interface as shown in Figure 1. ‘Sequence Containers’ were
used to combine tasks and link the steps required for this ETL Process using SQL Server stored
procedures. The steps were:
Remove All Foreign Keys
Truncate Tables
Load DimTables
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MRA39 Assignment 04 August, 05, 2021
Load FACT Table
Add Foreign Keys
The Package executed successfully with message as follows below:
SSIS package "C:\BI\Ass04_MRA39\Solution1\A4ETLProcess\ETLProcess.dtsx" starting.
SSIS package "C:\BI\Ass04_MRA39\Solution1\A4ETLProcess\ETLProcess.dtsx" finished:
Success.
The program '[14868] DtsDebugHost.exe: DTS' has exited with code 0 (0x0).
Part 1: MS Tutorials
Lesson 1: This lesson focused on creating a ETL package that extracts data from a single flat file
and transforms the data into the ‘FactCurrncyRate’ table in the ‘AdventureWorksDW2012’ DB.
See Figure
Lesson 2: In this lesson a ‘Foreach Loop container’ was used to iterate through the matching files
provided as sample data\files. Figure 3 shows successful execution of the ‘Foreach Loop
container’.
Lesson 3: Lesson 3 provide an understanding of how to add logging capabilities with SSIS
making monitoring and troubleshooting efficient. Logs can be written to various formats; the Text
File format was used in this Lesson. See figure 4.
Lesson 4: In Lesson 4, the sample data was deliberately corrupted to force an error during the
package execution. See Figure 5
4. Conclusion
The need for data consolidation over the last few years has increased rapidly as organisations seek
to find their strategic answers to their goals and objectives in data analytics, thus, Business
Intelligence plays a critical role. The ability to consolidate date into one common source from a
myriad of sources is often complex and choosing the correct enterprise is not only essential but it
would also improve the quality of the ETL process.
This paper provides a high-level overview of Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services and how
this visual tool was utilised in collecting, transforming and copying data from a relational
database to a data warehouse database. This paper also provides details on the Microsoft tutorials
completed, lessons one, two, three and four were successfully complete with the desired
outcomes.
5. References
Tok, W., Parida, R., Masson, M., Ding, X. and Sivashanmugam, K. 2012. Microsoft SQL Server
2012 Integration Services. California: O’ Reilly
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MRA39 Assignment 04 August, 05, 2021
6. Figures
Figure 1: ETL Process
Figure 2: MS SSIS Tutorial
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MRA39 Assignment 04 August, 05, 2021
Figure 3: ForEach Loop Tutorial
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MRA39 Assignment 04 August, 05, 2021
Figure 4: Create Logging Tutorial
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MRA39 Assignment 04 August, 05, 2021
Figure 5: Corrupt File Tutorial
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