Complaints About SSIS

I'm sure Microsoft has heard most of these complaints many, many times, but I just have to rant about the issues I've encountered with SSIS over the last few weeks. Basically, SSIS, IMO, is a pile of dog ***. Yes, it gets the job done, but only in an extremely inefficient fashion:

Objects are ID'd by a GUID. This means that, (for instance) if you change a connection by deleting an existing connection and replace it by another, all of the objects using the old connection break -- EVEN IF YOU USE EXACTLY THE SAME CONNECTION NAME -- because they only know the connection by the GUID. Deleting the old Connection, even if you rebuild the new one with exactly the same name, pointing at exactly the same server, etc., breaks everything because all objects are ID'd by a GUID, not by a name (what genius at Microsoft thought this was a good idea?) All you get is an error message like "Connection manager {C72CC467-C142-4696-AF31-58B00DAC6ADE} does not exist" -- why isn't BIDS smart enough to resolve references by both the GUID and the Name? Why isn't there a "Find and replace" when updating or replacing objects?

SSIS is unbelieveably slow! Opening up a large project means you may as well step out for a cup of coffee because it takes so long to load. I believe this is because the project is based on the XML in the DTSX file, which means SSIS has to read the file in and interpret all the tags. Even on a fast machine, it's much, much slower to load an SSIS project than a Visual Studio project. Why the SQL Server team chose to use a different paradigm (one big, fat, slow file) than .NET and C# projects (a separate file for each object, and only opening the file when the developer opens the object) is beyond me. Visual Studio has a paradigm that works, yet the SSIS team chose to go their own way.

(SQL Sever Management Studio is also unbelievably slow, but that's an issue for another forum.)

Over and over again I've encountered issues seemingly related to the XML storage paradigm. The most common is editing a Task Script, then having BIDS complain about missing binary content when I return to UI. The suggested solution is to "visit" the code module so BIDS can rebuild the binary content. This is obviously a bug in BIDS, and should never have gotten past beta testing. If BIDS can't detect a change in the code behind a Task Script and regenerate the binary without the user having to "visit" the code, there's a serious problem with the internals.

Why is the user interface so cumbersome? Why can't I just right-click on a Script Task and drop directly into the code behind the object, rather than having to double-click, wait for the UI to appear, move to the "Script" tab, and select the "Design Script" button? Was this UI ever reviewed by beta testers? Does Microsoft really believe the BIDS interface is efficient? Too many properties are only seen when double-clicking on an object, while others appear in the property window. ALL properties should be accessible in the property window so that we don't have to double-click on an object and work through its inefficient editor.

Then, there's a myriad of stupid issues, such as -- when you change the connection for a Data Flow Component, all the exising metadata is invalidated, and you have to manually mark it all for deletion, close the editor, and re-open the editor. This is nonsense -- it's like some 12-year old decided that developers have all the time in the world to perform tasks that BIDS should be doing for us. Why can't just mark and delete mappings without having to close and reopen it

I am really sick and tired of the slow and inefficient user interface, and having to deal with the half-baked paradigms implemented in BIDS's features. It really has a "beta product" feel to it, as if it was rushed to market when it really needed another six months of development. I've got a job to get done here, and I'm spending the majority of my time working around the limitations built into BIDS. I could have written this package using bare VB.Net code in Visual Studio in half the time I've already spent on it, and I'm nowhere near done. IOW, BIDS has been a major drain on productivity.

- Mike