If you're new to SSIS, this book is great. It covers the fundamentals in an easy, step-by-step way.

It is true that there are quite a few errors in the book. Before diving in you should visit the errata list on the website, but that should be the habit whenever working through a technical learning book. The exercises on the accompanying CD had quite a few problems, but nothing that couldn't be worked through.

As a surprise bonus, Chapter 12, "Data Warehouse Concepts", was an excellent introduction to the topic and it made me understand things I haven't been able to grasp before.

Altogether, a very satisfying book.

I agree witht the previous readers that the book was hastely done without any thought for quality! A lot of examples from the book differ drastically with the examples in the cd.(and even with the electronic copy of the book that came w/ the cd!)

I tried to salvage the situation by visiting MS Press for some errata announcements, but i was even more confused in the web-maze that they hyperlinked me to.... to no avail (surprise, surprise!)

If you have a limited budget on reference books... dont buy this one.

I found this book to be quite informative. Given that I am a first timer to SSIS, there were some useful examples. There could have been more substance around the Datawarehousing part of the book. The examples provided on the CD were shockingly packaged. There were files missing and incorrect CD's. This is disappointing given that I bought this book because it was a Microsoft Press publishing.

I have a project to create a data warehouse, ETL the data and report from the new data warehouse. I have no SQL server 2005 experience at all. But after I read this book and follow the book step by step. I was able to create my DW ETL data to corresponding DIM and Fact tables and created my reports from my DW correctly without any problem. This book has very clear concepts and very practical steps. If you like to learn-by-doing on SSIS. This is the book does it all.

Terrible CD companion. Most samples have errors, don't run as installed due to incorrect paths and missing connection strings and database auth's. Very frustrating book to learn from if used as a STEP by STEP as the title indicates. Seek a different learning source.

if you are a first time visitor to SSIS, I think its a good book. It could definitely have been better but if you need to really practice on real life scenarious, it covers them well. There might be some instructions here and there which do not exactly mirror to the latest version and not sure if those were typos vs beta version but since the SSIS interface is so intuitive it's not as bad and this book really gets you upto speed in very short time.
If you are a totally new to the SSIS world, I would recommend it.

The book is well written and provides good hands on examples and exercises to practice on...but the problem is with these book supplied exercies. Everything was going great until I hit chapter 7 then I started geting errors when trying to load and run the suppied sample exercise programs.

I eventually got the chapter 7 exercise to work but still kept getting errors when loading. Chapter 8 was a complete disaster. The errors increased to the point that I could not run the exercise. I could tell that these chapters were written by someone else. This book has many authors (not good!). As of right now I am stuck on chapter 8 and can go no further. I can tell that this book was just hurried out the door with no technical review.

Do not waste your money on this stupid book. I would suggest that you use and get one of the Osboune books on integration services instead of this one. At least their exercises work. This one does not. What a complete waste!!!!

PS If anyone out there has come across and fixed these chapter loading problems already please let me know so that I can continue with the book.