BIDS Helper 1.2 Released

BIDS Helper is a CodePlex project that delivers a set of Visual Studio add-ins for developers working on BI projects. It's been around for a while, but until now has not had any SSIS-focused features.

Until now!

The BIDS Helper team has just released version 1.2 of their tool, and it now includes (in addition to a bunch of SSAS-related stuff as well) these new SSIS features:

• Create Fixed Width Columns - Simplifies the definition of a fixed width flat file connection manager
• dtsConfig File Formatter - As far as I can tell, this is just another shortcut for the ctrl-k, ctrl-d "prettify" keyboard chord that is built into Visual Studio
• Expression and Configuration Highlighter - Color-codes tasks and connection managers that have properties set by configurations or expressions, making your packages more self-documenting.
• Expression List - Adds a new "Expression List" window to Visual Studio's "Other Windows" menu; this window displays all expressions defined within the package.
• Smart Diff - Provides a pre-processor for the built-in VSS or TFS differencing tools, to make it easier to diff two DTSX files' XML content.

All in all, this looks like a major step forward in the SSIS developer's toolbox. The Expression and Configuration Highlighter and Smart Diff features in particular provide functionality I have often wanted, and even if they're not exactly what I would have liked, they're still better than what we had before. Check it out!