SQL Server Integration Services Design Patterns

This book provided the insight I needed to successfully complete my work as a BI Specialist.

This is very hard for me to read. Screenshots are very large with poor resolution, Sample code is normal sized font, and the narration, the part that is supposed to teach you, is extremely small. Also, The back of the book advertises source code is available online, false, source code is not available.What I really wanted from this book was examples in BIML. The BIML examples in this book do not go beyond the many basic examples available online.I am lead to believe the authors do have experience with ETL in SSIS, I don't believe they know how to write a book on the subject.

This is a very good book. I should point out that I was asked to review it, and that I know the authors personally. But that doesn't diminish my appreciation for the book at all - it simply means that I hear the authors' voices as I read it.The "Design Patterns" aspect of this is important, I think. Some books try to go into every detail about every aspect of a particular technology, and that's not what this book does. Instead, it goes into the experiences that the authors have had, and shows useful patterns for being able to get deeper into SSIS (and related technology like BIML), and to get started in a good way. I have no qualms at all in recommending this book, whether to beginners or to experienced users.

I REALLY wanted to like this book. The idea is great, and I think there is a market for books that provide design concepts and ideas like this. I really do appreciate their attempt to write on this topic. Unfortunately the editing of the book was poorly executed and makes it hard to appreciate the content. The reader has to overcome code being split in half by images several times. For those of us who read technical books, it starts to feel frustrating and becomes a struggle to stay committed to the content. Following the concepts line by line produced errors, which would not be a big deal if the author provided a place to talk out the issues as a community of readers. Before writing this review I tried to reach out to the author Andy Leonard, but have not received a reply to date. Hopefully someone points out these proofing issues to the publisher and offers a discount for a corrected copy. Please proof read the book AFTER it is printed. These issues would become very obvious at that point. I will continue looking for this author to write on this topic as I REALLY like the idea. Next time I just will try to review the book before ordering it for my bookshelf.

I ordered the book's first edition in December 2014, just before the second edition came out, and then got the second one to see what has changed. My impression is - very little.One expects the preface to explain how the new edition is different from the old one. This second edition, however, still features the "First-edition Foreword", alone. Fortunately, before returning the first edition to Amazon, I took photos of the book's table of contents. Comparing them to the second edition's ToC, I notice only small changes. A ten-page chapter on the OData data source type has been added; first edition's Chapter 12, "Logging patterns", overlapping with Chapter 15, "Logging and reporting patterns", has been removed; first edition's Chapter 17, "Business Intelligence Markup Language", has turned into two chapters, with several more pages in total; Chapter 8, "Parallel Data Warehouse patterns", suggests material edits ... That seems to be it. In some cases, such as with Chapter 3, "Scripting patterns", subsection lists look different, but on closer inspection, one finds that an "old" subsection has been split. Chapter page counts have anyway barely changed.My rating of the first edition was only two stars: I did not like the book's writing/explanations, and objected to its talk of "design patterns", feeling that the book's content was much more straightforward than what its title suggested. At the same time, I acknowledged dearth of SSIS books, and recommended SSIS professionals to try out the book for themselves. I am going to stick with the original rating, and with the original recommendation.PS. I am an MCSE: BI, and read "SSIS Design Patterns" while preparing for the 70-467 exam, which touches on SSIS. I did not find it useful.