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When should I use one versus the other? For instance, let's say I have 20 comma delimited, denormalized text files and I want to transform the data and load it into normalized SQL Server tables.

Robert
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  • Related: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/184107/my-boss-has-a-bad-case-of-not-invented-here/184110#184110 – Jim G. Jul 29 '13 at 02:26
  • Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you've tried and why it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, and most of all it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer. Also see [ask] – gnat Jul 29 '13 at 06:14
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    Voting to put on hold to give you a moment to revise your question. Please add some more details around your tasks and what you have researched so far. –  Jul 29 '13 at 11:18

2 Answers2

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What are the size of the files? T/SQL is pretty fast, I've done million record imports in less than three seconds. Is this 'once' or 'scheduled'?

SSIS is for complicated scenarios. SSIS can schedule FTPs, external commands (such as ZIP and unZIP), branching paths on step failures, etc. Therefore it isn't as simple as importing data, it's the entire 'overnight data exchange process'.

Given that you have CSVs (presumably with column names) much of your work would appear to have been done already. If you don't need to filter out bad records you're just doing 'group bys' to generate validation fact tables.

More information is needed.

Meredith Poor
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  • Thanks for the response. All of the data is valid so I don't have to check for errors or anything of such, and periodically new valid text files will be added to the directory to be loaded into the database. The files are relatively small (the biggest is 7Mb) and at the moment there's only 52 text files. – Robert Jul 28 '13 at 16:11
  • If these files are the same over and over, then you can set up SSIS scripts to do them periodically. If DBA involvement is necessary to deal with unpredictable names or new table schemas, SSIS won't do much for you. – Meredith Poor Jul 28 '13 at 19:35
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There has been a discussion on a similar subject on Linked in .

From what you said l would use TSQL.

One of the features l liked about SSIS was the ability to include some information regarding errors. So if the package crashed l knew where to look and had some idea why. Similar idea to this posting over kill for 20 CSV files. Just another way to solve a challenge.

SQLBobScot
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