SSIS Performance Tuning Strategy

Similar to my post on SSIS Performance Tuning Techniques, this resource is neither mine nor new, but it looks like a lot of people don't know that it exists. Check out this "SQL Server 2005 Integration Services: A Strategy for Performance" white paper: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/technologies/ssisperfstrat.mspx#E6G

According to the abstract, "This white paper covers several interesting and unique methods for managing metadata using built-in features in SQL Server 2005 Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services. The paper explains such concepts as data lineage, business and technical metadata, auditing, and impact analysis. " This is really weird to me, because there's nothing about SSAS or SSRS in here at all, especially since there's also nothing about data lineage or metadata management. Copy and paste gone wrong, perhaps?

To me the most interesting thing here is the "OVAL" (Operations , Volume, Application, Location) approach for evaluating and tuning SSIS performance. Lots of people on the MSDN SSIS Forums have been asking lately about SSIS performance, and either no one is bothering to look, or else this white paper is difficult to find.

And for people too lazy (or should that be "visually oriented") to read through the whole thing, Donald Farmer (then the SSIS Program Manager) did an excellent presentation at TechEd last year about this OVAL approach, and you can view it on demand here: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032298087&CountryCode=US

But remember: Performance tuning is a complex art that is a superset of all of the other things that go into building software on any platform, and SSIS is no exception. In order to do it right, you need to understand how the platform works and how your software interacts with it, and have a methodical approach for identifying and refining the scope of performance problems. Although it's wonderful to have an approach like OVAL to use, without an understanding of how SSIS works under the hood, it's not going to do you much good...