.Net vs SSIS: What should SSIS be used for?

Question

If I have the option of using .Net and can do data transformations just fine in .Net, when would I need SSIS? Is there a certain task

Answer 1

I have a lot of experience with SSIS from small projects to large, complex ETL. Without going into the details, this is my guidance for you:

• If you are a DBA and you are not familiar with .NET, or if you are a developer quite familiar with SSIS, then you can use SSIS for small, simple, fairly straightforward extract, transform, load (ETL) tasks.

• SSIS is very quirky and there are many pitfalls, gotchas, and what might be considered outright bugs. It is extremely powerful if you are intimately familiar.

• C# now has TPL Dataflow. Simple performance tests put it ahead of SSIS. (eg http://mymemoryleaks.blogspot.cz/2013/10/ssis-vs-tpldataflow.html)

• If you want to do anything beyond trivial, and if you can use .NET skills, use .NET instead of SSIS.