Introduction

“Why use SQL instead of SSIS for ETL?”, or words to that effect is a question I got recently in an interview. Since I am not exactly fast on my feet, I gave an answer that was specific to my skillset. That is not the best way to answer that question. Yes, it is true that, at this point in my career, I can write SQL faster than I can write an SSIS package. But that is not a compelling argument because not everybody has my SQL skills. In this article, I am going to give you five really good business reasons why if you run SQL Server, you should stop using SSIS to build ETL processes.

I moved away from using SSIS to build ETL several years ago because of the reasons I list below. I now use:

1. T-SQL for anything that involves moving data within or between database servers. I will also use BULK INSERT for importing large CSVs.

2. Python for anything that T-SQL cannot do like moving or writing files to disk.

In general, the theme of all of these suggestions is moving away from SSIS will save the company tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.