Product Description

One of the new outstanding features of SQL Server is Data Transformation Services (DTS). DTS can be used by both developers and database administrators (DBAs) and is attracting a lot of interest. There is a demand for information and currently no other books are available to satisfy this. DTS enables data to be moved between a wide variety of sources and destinations, as well as transforming the data along the way to suit your requirements. DTS can be used to maximum effect in data-driven applications, enabling dynamic data transfer across internet and intranet applications. This offers rapid and effective solutions to common problems such as:

Automatically transferring data into data warehouses Importing and exporting data to and from other applications for analysis and reporting Moving working copies of databases between servers

The capabilities of DTS are large and this book will give the reader a complete picture of how to use DTS to its fullest potential.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #975169 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 855 pages

From the Back Cover
DTS (Data Transformation Services) helps you create a transactional system to load and transform your data from and to a wide variety of sources. SQL Server DTS was introduced in the release of SQL Server 7.0; SQL Server 2000 sees the functionality and power of this outstanding and incredibly useful tool greatly increased. DTS can be used to maximum effect in data–driven applications, offering rapid and effective solutions to a wide range of common problems.

Professional SQL Server 2000 DTS provides a complete introduction to DTS fundamentals and architecture before exploring the more complex data transformations involved in moving data between different servers, applications, and providers. The book then focuses on DTS programming via the DTS object model, enabling developers to incorporate custom transformations and reporting capabilities into their applications. Advanced topics are explained including error handling, dynamic data loading, and data warehouses. With code and case studies, this book gives the reader a complete picture of how to use DTS to its fullest potential.

Who is this book for?

This book is principally aimed at database programmers and administrators who have a working knowledge of SQL Server, and who wish to take DTS beyond its most basic level and tailor it to their needs. It will also appeal to managers and project managers who want to gain an understanding of DTS and how it could benefit their businesses.

What does this book cover?

• A detailed explanation of the seventeen principal DTS tasks
• Connecting to, querying, and converting heterogeneous data
• Dynamic configuration of your DTS packages
• Enhancing your DTS packages with VBScript and Visual Basic
• Writing your own custom tasks
• Using DTS in a data–warehousing environment
• Employing DTS in other applications

About the Author
He also works as a Sr. SQL Server DBA and spends most of his time deep in DTS and SQL Server.

Todd Robinson (MCP, MCP+I, MCP+SB, MCSE, MCSE+I, MCSD, MCDBA, MCT, CCNA) lives in Atlanta, GA where he is an internet application developer and data warehousing guru for Metlife. He specializes in MTS/COM+, ASP, XML, SQL Server and related Windows DNA technologies. In addition to his normal job duties at Metlife, he is President of GradesNow.com an internet application service for teachers, students and parents to allow access to grades online.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the wonderful people at Wrox, especially Dominic for giving me this opportunity to help write this book. It is really a thrill to be writing a book for a company who puts out the best programmer reference books in the world. I would also like to thank my friend Dave, who instilled in me all the knowledge I will never use. Also Mark Cochran for supplying me all the hardware to run 7 different versions of Windows and SQL all at once. I would like to thank Randy Rhude at Metlife, who gave me the opportunity to learn and develop my skills with DTS enough to write a book about it. Finally I wish to thank Sergey Dvinin, the object master, for the VB help in the final chapter. < He also has experience in clickstream analytics, data mining, transactional application architecture, Internet application architecture, database administration and database design.

Customer Reviews

Do not bother with this book.
Refer to SQL Books Online or SQLDTS.hlp on the SQL Server CD for basic to intermediate help on DTS instead... If you need to know more about programmatical DTS and the DTS Object Model then this book is of no use at all. In fact I have been unable to find a good programmers reference to DTS.

Not detailed enough to be useful.
This book does a good job of explaining all the things about DTS you could have worked out yourself. However when it comes to anything more advanced like programming with the DTS object model (which is what I wanted the book for inthe first place) the information is very sparse and few examples are provided.

If you want to do anything useful with DTS then don't buy this book. If however you just want to confirm in writing all the obvious features of the graphical interface (already written in the online documentation) then this is for you.

An example of the type of irrelevant stuff which was clearly inserted in this book just to pad it out are the chapter and half dedicated to teaching vbscript from scratch (I suppose we should be grateful the authors didn't put in a description of the entire VB IDE when the got to the custom tasks chapter), and the 100 pages of index's at the back which give no more information then the SQL server books online.

Wrox usually publish excellent technical books, this is a disappointment.

The book fails to mention several essential pitfalls
This book guides you through the simple aspects of DTS well. However, this is all it does. It fails to adequately cover the more challenging aspects of DTS. For example, its coverage of the DTS object model is unhelpful and does not begin to explain how it should be deployed as part of a wider solution.

DTS is still a developing technology but some workarounds for common problems would be helpful, such as the various problems to do with moving DTS packages from development to a live environment.