Developing a Custom Connection Manager
Integration Services uses connection managers to encapsulate the information needed to connect to an external data source. Integration Services includes a variety of connection managers that support connections to the most commonly used data sources, from enterprise databases to text files and Excel worksheets. If the connection managers and external data sources supported by Integration Services do not entirely meet your requirements, you can create a custom connection manager.
To create a custom connection manager, you have to create a class that inherits from the ConnectionManagerBase base class, apply the DtsConnectionAttribute attribute to your new class, and override the important methods and properties of the base class, including the ConnectionString property and the AcquireConnection method.
For working samples of custom connection managers, see the Sql Server Custom Connection Manager Sample and Excel2 Custom Connection Manager Sample. The code snippets shown in this section are drawn from the Sql Server Custom Connection Manager sample.
Note
Many of the tasks, sources, and destinations that are included with Integration Services work only with specific types of connection managers that are also included with Integration Services. Before developing a custom connection manager for use with built-in tasks and components, check whether those components restrict the list of available connection managers to those of a specific type.
In This Section
This section describes how to create, configure, and code a custom connection manager and its optional custom user interface. The code snippets shown in this section are drawn from the Sql Server Custom Connection Manager Sample.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
Describes how to create the classes for a custom connection manager project. |
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Describes how to implement a custom connection manager by overriding the methods and properties of the base class. |
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Describes how to implement the user interface class and the form that is used to configure the custom connection manager. |
Related Sections
For information that is common to all the type of custom objects that you can create in Integration Services, see the following topics.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
Describes the basic steps in implementing all types of custom objects for Integration Services. |
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Describes custom persistence and explains when it is necessary. |
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Describes the techniques for building, signing, deploying, and debugging custom objects. |
For information on the other types of custom objects that you can create in Integration Services, see the following topics.
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
Discusses how to program custom tasks. |
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Discusses how to program custom log providers. |
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Discusses how to program custom enumerators. |
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Discusses how to program custom data flow sources, transformations, and destinations. |