Lets face it, Microsoft have never been good at documentation; and it is with heavy heart that when a product finally falls off the shelf a new equally undocumented product is paraded.

SSIS was no different, unless you’re willing to wade through what documentation there is with little or no organisation, you’ll have to patch together how things work by searching the internet and hoping that someone has already done what you want.

Migrating DTS from SQL Server 2000 can be daunting, it has its pitfalls, the Migration Wizard supplied with SQL Server 2005 and 2008 only has a success rate of at best 25%, you can see why Microsoft are pushing a 3rd party tool (which I’m quite surprised that they haven’t already bought the company out).

Migrating simple DTS packages is easy enough and you can find articles on these all over the net (links at the bottom).  However this is where all the articles stop, short of actually telling you where the actual SSIS packages are placed and how to get at them.

SSIS packages are kept within the msdb database, in a system table called dbo.sysdtspackages.

To view the package you will need to have installed Microsoft Visual Studio (2005 or 2008), depending on your version that comes with your SQL Server installation.

Once it Visual Studio has loaded, create a new Integration Services Project, give it a name and click open.  In the solution explorer on the right, you can delete the package.dtsx file that is created, this is blank.

Next right click on the SSIS Packages title and choose, Add Existing Package.

Fill in each of the sections, generally you’ll be working locally, use the browse button (…) to find your package and then click OK to open it.

Your package will appear in the main window.