Back in Jun 2024, I announced I was changing the way I report updates to the SQL Server Integration Services extension for Visual Studio (in a post titled SSIS Extension Updates – Jun 2024). Right on time, here’s the second quarterly update.

There Are Two Integration Services Extensions

I’m not sure why the decision was made to “fork” development and maintenance of the Integration Services extension for Visual Studio 2022. Based upon experience with SSIS, Visual Studio, and the Microsoft SSIS team, I am confident there’s a very good reason. As one can glean from my appointment screenshot above, I save the links to both pages. The links are:

SSIS Pre-2022: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=SSIS.SqlServerIntegrationServicesProjects&ssr=false#overview
SSIS 2022: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=SSIS.MicrosoftDataToolsIntegrationServices

I am happy to report that I have personally tested both updates. </happytrombone>

Visiting the SQL Server Integration Services Projects page reveals no updates to the pre-2022 SSIS extension since my last post on the topic:

The latest update is version 4.6, released 21 Mar 2024.

New:

• IS Deployment Wizard supports Azure Active Directory… er, I mean Entra, authentication.
• Dimension and Partition Processing components are supported.

Bug fixes:

• A notification to “Repair Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Applications 2019 via Control Panel” was added when developers encounter a failure of scripting to update. The past few updates have addressed bugs related to scripting in SSIS.
• An exception when converting to Project Deployment Model. Project Deployment Model is necessary for deployment to the SSIS Catalog, and conversion to Project Deployment Model supports backwards compatibility with SSIS projects developed using Package Deployment Model. Package Deployment Model was the only deployment model available in pre-2012 versions of SSIS. Project Deployment Model has been the default setting for new SSIS project development since SSIS 2012.

SSIS 2022 Update

The latest (at the time of this writing) at the SQL Server Integration Services Projects 2022 page:

The latest update is version 1.5, released 13 Sep 2024.

Bug fixes:

• SQLClient Data Provider for ADO.Net test connection error resolved. (Upgrade VS version to VS2022 17.12 preview 2)
• Fix the Internal error when Connect to Azure AS by Analysis Services Connection manager.

Known issues:

• In the context menu (right mouse button) on objects in the project (e.g., the solution, a package) in Visual Studio, many of the entries appear many times.
• “
• DQS has side-by-side issue when target SQL Server Version is 2017 and 2019 when SQL Server engine installed at the same machine.” If I’m reading this correctly, DQS experiences some issue when multiple versions of SQL Server are installed on the same server. I’ve never been a fan of installing multiple versions of SQL Server on the same server. I highly recommend SSIS developers not attempt to install different versions of SSIS on the same server. It’s “bad.”

SSIS Catalog Browser and Compare Updates

As mentioned in a recent blog post, Kent Bradshaw and I are excited to announce the availability of SSIS Catalog Browser v0.9.20! It’s actually now version 0.9.21. We’re making progress on the latest version of SSIS Catalog Compare – tentatively titled SSIS Catalog Compare 2025 (beta) – which we hope to release before the end on 2024.

Conclusion

Lots of enterprises continue to use SSIS – especially for on-premises data engineering. In a recent conversation with Enterprise Data & Analytics data engineers, we surmised SSIS may likely remain available for as long as SQL Server is supported on-premises. It’s a guess, yes; but an educated and somewhat informed guess.