SSIS Indirect Configurations

Configurations in SSIS are mainly used to make the package independent of the environment  dependent objects such as connection strings ,location of files etc.. When we  deploy our package to different server with different configurations we can  easily apply the environment dependent objects through configurations  .

I will implement direct  configurations initially than i will  extend to indirect configurations.

I'm using the same package of my previous demo,a simple package of for each loop for a collection of excel files,which loads the files dynamically to a database table.So the connection string for excel source is implemented dynamically by using variables with expression as i explained in my previous post,and the destination is connection string pointing to a table in my local database  SSIS Demo 

I will create a configuration file for these two


In order to create configuration you can  either go to SSIS menu or right click on your design surface and add configurations

I have selected configuration type as xml  configuration file ,and given a location for it.remember  configurations can be implemented using many ways with xml files or sqlserver or environment variables in this demo i will be using combination  of xml files and environment variables.In the next step we will   selecting the environment dependent variables 

This example simply selects connection string for our destination  database and variable value. By Capturing these we can make changes in our destination server configuration with relevant values which are local to that environment .In next step give  a name and finish.


Save the package  and manually copy the package to the other server.
Bring DTEXECUI   by searching  for programme file  for  DTEXECUI

Double click DTExecUI 

Give the connection details of the package location and  than add configuration file as shown above.The Configuration  file should be edited as per your environment.


This is a direct configuration,as we need to provide the hard coded location of the configuration file which is not a flexible approach.In order to avoid this we will create an environment variable pointing to the location of configuration file

 Environment variables  can be set by right clicking the  computer  and  advance system  settings  and environment  variables  .

 and finally  configure the environment variable. and give this environment variable name while executing the package on the destination server with the environment variable set.