Adding Advanced Features to Packages

Integration Services includes many features that you can use to extend the functionality of Integration Services packages. After you have finished building a basic package, you may want to add other features that make the package more robust, flexible, and easier to troubleshoot.

You can add the following features to packages:

• Logging that captures information about a package at run time, making it easier to troubleshoot package performance and failure.

• Transactions that ensure data integrity by supporting commit and rollback when packages perform multiple operations.

• Checkpoints that make it possible to restart a package from a point of failure, instead of rerunning the workflow for the complete package.

• Variables that pass values to scripts, provide parameter values for SQL statements, or modify the evaluation results of expressions.

• Expressions and property expressions that update values in columns and properties of packages and package objects.

• Queries that data flow components, such as the Lookup transformation, use to create in-memory reference tables.

The following table lists topics related to advanced package features.

Topic	Description
Implementing Logging in Packages	Describes what log providers are, how to add logs to a package, and how to configure logging options.
Ensuring Data Integrity by Using Transactions	Describes how to use transactions in a package to ensure data integrity and manage rollback.
Restarting Failed Packages by Using Checkpoints	Describes checkpoints, and how to implement checkpoints in a package to make it restartable.
Using Variables in Packages	Describes the different ways you can use variables in a package.
Using Expressions in Packages	Describes the different ways you can use expressions in a package.
Using Property Expressions in Packages	Describes property expressions, and how to use them to update the values of properties in a package.
Using Queries in Packages	Describes the Query Builder and the different ways you can provide query statements.

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See Also

Concepts

Designing and Implementing Packages (Integration Services)