There was some great news this week for SSIS developers that are building solutions involving databases other than SQL Server; Microsoft will, later this year, be releasing new connectors for Oracle, Teradata and SAP BW. Check out Darvey Lavender's announcement on the SSIS connectivity wiki or read Matt Masson's blog entry for more details. I should point out that you will need Enterprise Edition of SSIS in order to use them and I also don't know whether the connectors will work on SQL Server 2005 or whether they will solely be for SQL Server 2008. Hopefully by the time you read this someone in the know will have left a comment here filling in the gaps.
For Oracle you now get the following:
- Oracle connection manager
- Bulk load destination
This signals a marked change in policy from Microsoft. Precisely three years and one day ago Darvey's predecessor Donald Farmer posted a blog entry entitled Oracle and SQL Server Integration Services where he stated:
I do not expect that Microsoft will write an Oracle fast loader - currently it comes in around number 999 in my list of 1000 features for next version, just slightly ahead of recompiling for Linux.
Clearly this feature got raised up the priority list. I wonder if this was Darvey's influence that led to this change in direction? Or perhaps the european commission's?
For those who either can't wait until the connectors are released or can't afford enterprise edition there are still options available to you. Rather than repeat myself you should head to my previous blog entry Persistent Oracle Connector.
-Jamie
P.S. For more information about Oracle and SSIS go here: http://blogs.conchango.com/jamiethomson/archive/tags/Oracle/SSIS/default.aspx