Deployment and Administration Enhancements

This release offers a new deployment model and ways to administer your data inte
gration workloads in the enterprise. The project deployment model provides the a
bility to define parameters for packages and projects. With this model, a projec
t is the unit of deployment in Integration Services. Build your project, package
s, and parameters to a project deployment file (.ispac extension) and deploy it
directly to the SQL Server database engine. New dialog boxes in SQL Server Manag
ement Studio and a comprehensive set of Transact-SQL views and stored procedures
help you manage, execute, and monitor your packages in real time.
For more information about these new features, read about the project deployment
model on the Microsoft TechNet Wiki.
Object Impact and Data Lineage Analysis
You can now view information about impact and data lineage between supported Int
egration Services objects that are deployed to the server and supported SQL Serv
er SQL Serverobjects.
You extract impact and data linage metadata about Integration Services and SQL S
erver objects by using extraction points.
You use this information to troubleshoot the behavior of an object, such as a sl
ow-running package or a package that does not run, and to anticipate how changes
to one object can affect another object. For example, you want to determine why
a package is running slowly. You use information about the data lineage for the
package to help you determine that it is querying a table that lacks useful ind
exes.
The Dependency Designer window in SQL Server Management Studio provides differen
t views that show how objects are related with regard to data lineage and impact
. You can also access impact and data lineage information programmatically by us
ing Microsoft.SqlServer.Dependencies.
For more information about object impact and data lineage, see Determining Impac
t and Data Lineage.
For more information about displaying a view of impact and data lineage, see How
to: View Object Impact and Data Lineage.
For more information about extracting metadata, see Extracting Impact and Data L
ineage Data.
Usability Enhancements
Business Intelligence Development Studio has been updated to help new and experi
enced users develop packages more easily. A new Integration Services toolbox, de
signer refinements, and other usability enhancements help new users become produ
ctive quickly. To help users of all experience levels, the Data Flow designer ha
s been updated to accommodate a more flexible authoring experience. For example,
it is now possible to edit a component even when its input path is disconnected
, and the process of reconnecting a component to a different incoming path and r
emapping the columns has been simplified. For more information about these new f
eatures, read about the Integration Services usability enhancements on the Micro
soft TechNet Wiki.
Reduced Memory Usage by the Merge and Merge Join Transformations
Microsoft has made the Integration Services Merge and Merge Join transformations
 more robust and reliable. This is achieved by reducing the risk that these comp
onents will consume excessive memory when the multiple inputs produce data at un
even rates. This improvement helps packages that use the Merge or Merge Join tra
nsformations to use memory more efficiently.
Microsoft has also provided new properties and methods for developers of custom
data flow components to implement a similar solution in their own components. Th
is improvement makes it more feasible to develop a robust custom data flow compo
nent that supports multiple inputs. For more information, see Developing Data Fl
ow Components with Multiple Inputs.
New Data Correction Component
Integration Services now includes the Data Correction transformation that enable
s you to more easily and accurately improve the quality of data.
For more information about improving data quality using these components, see Im
proving Data Quality.