Flexibitliy

Question

I'm new to SSIS and I am finding it hard to get started. Being a programmer for 20 years now, I was expecting a little more from the product. I fail to understand why I have to hard code so much when variables make so much more sense. For example, I want
to do something simple like check for the presence of multiple files before I get started. So I had to write a script of all things to check for each file. So to make it as generic as possible I pass in the File extension string, and the path string, but before
I can do that I have to use an expression task to map my external variable to my generic variable for my script. But I can handle that until I get to the ForEach container for files. There is no way to use a variable for the extension or path. I don't understand
how you guys mange this on a larger scale, and account for differences in testing and production deployment (connection strings, file paths, database schema, etc.). Surely you don't re-edit the entire package before deployment that would be a mistake ridden
nightmare, what am I missing here?
Lee

Answer 1

Hi Lee,
The Integration Services parameters, which allow us to assign values to properties at the execution time, are introduced in SQL Server 2012. To parameterize a Connection Manager, we can right click the Connection Manager and choose “Parameterize…” button.
Then, we can choose to create a new parameter to provide value for the connection string, or choose an existing parameter to supply the connection string. A SSIS parameter can be either of Project cope or Package cope, and a Connection Manager can be either
a Project Connection or a Package Connection.
In SSDT, we can modify the value of the parameters manually. After deploy the project to a SSISDB catalog database, we can modify the parameter values through SQL Server Management Studio or configure a parameter to get value from an Environment Variable.
Please note that parameters only works with Project Deployment Model.
For more information, please see:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mattm/archive/2011/07/22/parameterized-connection-managers.aspx 
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jamie_thomson/archive/2010/11/13/ssis-server-catalogs-environments-environment-variables-in-ssis-in-denali.aspx 
Regards,
Mike Yin
TechNet Community Support