Automate Deployment of SSIS Packages on SQL 2005

After much playing with SSIS packages I worked out how to Automate Import of Packages to File System using SQL to write out a dtutil batch file.  Then I worked on how to deploy packages back out to the SQL store from the file system. I imagine it might have been accomplished in a similar fashion as the import using a For Each File loop.  Instead I came across a very simple solution for deploying packages to the SQL Store. There is a free CODEPLEX download called BIDS Helper. It doesn’t even require an install,  It’s just an Add In for Visual Studio.

Simply download the appropriate zip file version from here and unpack it into your My DocumentsVisual Studio <version>Addins folder. Close and reopen BIDS and the deploy functionality is there.

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More detailed instructions on using it are here.

**Please note, if you have passwords embedded in your packages and want the ability to automatically deploy while maintaining the correct protection level you might want to use Package Configurations to maintain the passwords.  In this way the passwords won’t get stripped from the package on deployment since they will be stored in SQL Server or elsewhere.