Understanding the Components of an Integration Services Package

This section describes the objects that Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services provides for building Integration Services packages, and explains how the objects work together in the package workflow and how they can extend package functionality.

The objects include the following:

  • The package, the unit of work that is retrieved, executed, and saved, and the most important Integration Services object.

  • The control flow elements—tasks and containers—for building the control flow in a package. Control flow elements prepare or copy data, interact with other processes, or implement repeating workflow. Precedence constraints sequence the control flow elements into an ordered control flow and specify the conditions for executing tasks or containers.

  • The data flow components—sources, transformations, and destinations—for building data flows in a package that extract, transform, and load data. Paths sequence the data flow components into an ordered data flow.

  • The connection managers that connect to different types of data sources to extract and load data.

  • The variables that can be used in expressions to dynamically update column values and property expressions, control execution of repeating control flows, and define the conditions that precedence constraints apply.

  • The event handlers that run in response to the run-time events that packages, tasks, and containers raise.

  • The log providers that support logging of package run-time information such as the start time and the stop time of the package and its tasks and containers.

In This Section

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