Getting Started with SSIS : BIDS Overview - SQL Server 2008 Installation

BIDS stands for Business Intelligence Development Studio.

"Business Intelligence Development Studio is Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 with additional project types that are specific to SQL Server business intelligence. Business Intelligence Development Studio is the primary environment that you will use to develop business solutions that include Analysis Services, Integration Services, and Reporting Services projects. Each project type supplies templates for creating the objects required for Business Intelligence Solutions, and provides a variety of designers, tools, and wizards to work with the objects."

Why do I need it?

BIDS facilitates the entire development of solutions mentioned above. All you need to know is the business requirement and the basics of BI suite. The development need is highly reduced as a developer’s job can be summarized by DRAG, DROP, LINK & CONFIGURE the various tasks or transforms, as may be the case (I will elaborate them later). Talking specifically about SSIS, BIDS is the only way where you develop and test the SSIS package. SSIS package is nothing but a complex XML file. To make this xml file (package) and to modify the complex XML, we need BIDS. BIDS has lots of other features as well which we will be covering in the next chapter.

Where can I find BIDS?

You can get BIDS while installing MS SQL Server on your machine. While SQL Server installation on your machine follow the below steps and you will have BIDS on your machine.

Put a valid product key for your SQL server.

Accept the license terms

Setup the role as per your need

While selecting the features select SQL Server Integration Services (You do not see here as it is already installed on my machine) and then from the shared services select the Business Intelligence Development Studio.

After this step, you could proceed with your SQL Server installation. Once installed, you could start BIDS from Start->MS SQL Server -> SQL Server Business Intelligence Studio

When you open BIDS, it appears just like Visual Studios.

The difference comes when you try creating a new project (File->New->Project).

Here you will find the Business Intelligence Projects on the left pane and the various templates for MS BI development available. As of now, we would be concentrating on Integration Services Projects.