posted 1/30/2012 by ChrisAlbrektson - Views: [293]
Do you need to develop your SSIS packages faster? If the answer to that question is yes then here’s another reason to use BIxPress. BIxPress has a lot of features that can help speed up development that we have covered over the last couple of weeks. Today we will take a look at one of the most useful in my opinion and that’s the Package Builder and its available templates. The templates are time savers because you will not have to re-create the wheel each time you have packages that use some of the same functionality. From BIxPress you can choose any of the 100+ built-in templates or you can create and use your own. Let’s take a look at each.
First we’re going to add an existing template to our package. Simply right click on the package in the solution explorer and select ‘Package Builder Wizard.’
This will open the Package Builder Wizard. On this screen this is where you can choose from adding an existing template to an already created package or you can create a new package from any given template. For this example I’m going to select ‘Modify Packages from Template’ on the right.
On the next screen you see all of the templates on the left and a preview of the template on the right. Towards the bottom of the screen you can see the descriptions and who and when the package was created. This is useful when using your custom templates.
On the following screen you have the option to add this template to a single package or multiple packages.
From the image below you can change any of the configurable objects or properties to meet the requirements of your package. As you can see you can setup parameters, change the variables, file locations etc.
From here just click next then start. You will be prompted a couple times warning you that the package is going to be altered and the package will need to be reloaded. Just click yes both times if you agree with these changes. Once BIxPress has finished adding the template to your package you can review what has been added and make any other needed changes such as any further configuration and testing. As you can see from this image it inserted a For Each Loop, Data Flow Task, and a File System Task along with the needed variables and file connections.
Now we just went through the steps on how to use the built-in templates but you can follow these steps when creating and setting up your own templates. To learn more about this feature click here. If you want to find out more about some of the other features of BIxPress or get a free trial click here.