MS Business Intelligence Development Studio

This section describes the tasks that you typically perform when creating Integration Services packages in SSIS Designer.

SSIS Designer is a graphical tool for creating packages. It is available from Integration Services projects in Business Intelligence Development Studio.

SSIS Designer includes separate design surfaces for building a control flow, data flows, and event handlers in packages. The designer also provides access to the dialog boxes, windows, and wizards that you use to add functionality and advanced features to packages and to troubleshoot packages. For example, from SSIS Designer you can access the Configure SSIS Logs dialog box for implementing logging, the Variables window for adding and configuring variables, and the Set Breakpoints dialog box for setting breakpoints. For more information about the windows, dialog boxes, and wizards that SSIS Designer provides, see .

A package is created within the context of an Integration Services project. Before you can use SSIS Designer, you need to open an existing Integration Services project or create a new project. When you create a new Integration Services project in Business Intelligence Development Studio, a new package is automatically added to the project. To open SSIS Designer, you double-click a package in the SSIS Packages folder in an Integration Services project. For more information, see .

SSIS Designer has no dependency on the Integration Services service, the service that manages and monitors packages, and it is not required that the service be running to create or modify packages in SSIS Designer. However, if you stop the service while SSIS Designer is open, you can no longer open the dialog boxes that SSIS Designer provides and you may receive the error message "RPC server is unavailable." To reset SSIS Designer and continue working with the package, you must close the designer, exit Business Intelligence Development Studio, and then reopen Business Intelligence Development Studio, the Integration Services project, and the package.