If you follow along with the BIDS Helper project on CodePlex, you may have noticed that we released a new beta version on April 20th. The new build includes some bug fixes, and two new features.
Duplicate Role (SSAS)
The Duplicate Role feature allows you to create a copy of an existing SSAS role, along with all of it’s settings and permissions. Performing a regular copy and paste on a Role in SSAS will only copy the role membership, not all the permissions. The new feature will copy the role itself, and also copy the permissions associated with the original role. I’ve found this pretty useful over the past few months.
Biml Package Generator (SSIS)
The Biml Package Generator feature is one I’m pretty excited about, as it leverages some of the things I’ve been working on at Varigence over the past year. This feature enables you to use BI Markup Language (Biml) to generate SSIS packages. This is nice for a couple of reasons. First, Biml is a XML based language with a readable syntax, and for a lot of packages, I find it easier to just type the Biml to create the package, rather than using the designers. Second, the Biml compiler includes the ability to script the generation of Biml code, in a similar way to how you can use ASP.NET to script the production of HTML code. Using that, I can easily generate large numbers of packages very easily.
I’m starting a series of posts that will illustrate how to use the Biml functionality in BIDS Helper. This post will serve as an index page to locate these, and they will also be posted to the BIDS Helper documentation and the Varigence blog.
Part 1: Creating a Basic Package Using Biml
Part 2: Creating Tables using Biml and BimlScript
Part 3: Copy Data Dynamically with BimlScript
Part 4: Controlling the Control Flow with Biml
Part 5: Defining the Data Flow in Biml
As always, if you have questions, let me know in the comments.