SSIS Package Configurations allow us to modify SSIS package properties from outside of the packages. This gives us a seamless way to dynamically point our packages to our development, QA, and production environments without needing to manually open and modify our connection managers within each SSIS package. Package Configurations can be created using a SQL Server table, environment variable, XML files, registry entry, or parent SSIS package, but this post will focus on creating an package configuration using an XML file.

To create the Package Configuration, open an SSIS package in SSDT or BIDS and right-click in the blank area of the control flow and select Package Configurations.

Check the checkbox to enable package configurations and then click Add to add a package configuration to the package.

In the drop down list next to Configuration type select XML configuration file. Browse to the location where you wish to store the XML configuration file and type in the name which you’d like to give your configuration file and hit enter.

And now time for a quick note on best practices and my thoughts on using XML configuration files. SSIS package configurations are most often used to configure Connection Managers from outside the SSIS packages. With this in mind, I prefer to create one package configuration per Connection Manager. I also prefer to name the configuration file the same name as the Connection Manager. In my experience, the 1:1 ratio of XML configuration files to Connection Managers eases maintenance and management of the XML configuration files. If you’re creating XML configuration files to configure other properties of the package such as package variables or task properties, you may find another solution works better for you. That’s just my .02 cents on the matter.

Now we need to specify the property which we wish to configure. In this example, I’m selecting the ConnectionString property of a Connection Manager. Check the checkbox next to the ConnectionString property under the Connection Manager. Click Next. On the final screen you’ll need to give the Package Configuration a name. I give the same name as the XML Configuration File to help things stay nice and neat.

We can see our package configuration has been created. Click close.

Yay! Now your package has an XML configuration file set up to dynamically configure your connection string of the connection manager you selected at run time. All that is left to do is to copy the XML configuration file to each environment the package will be run on: developer machines, development, QA, and production environments. Then you must also update the XML configuration file with the environment’s connection string. Just open the XML file in note pad and update the Connection String to point to the appropriate server and database.

So we’ve set up the package configuration on a package. But what if we need to copy the package configuration to many other packages? Sure, we could complete the previous steps manually on each package, but that would take a lot of time. We can, however, easily accomplish this in a few clicks with BI xPress. In order to complete the following steps you will need to have BI xPress installed. You can download and install a free trial version of BI xPress here.

Shift select all of the packages within your SSIS project including the package that has the package configuration applied as well as the packages you wish to modify. Then right-click the packages in the Solution Explorer and select Package Configurations (BI xPress) to open the BI xPress Configuration Wizard.

Click Next pass the first screen of the Configuration Wizard.

You should see all of the packages highlighted and in the Select Items window. Click Next.

In the following screen you should see your packages listed and the lone package configuration displayed beneath the SSIS package we added the configuration to.

Right-click the package configuration and select copy or simply highlight the package configuration and hit Ctrl+c to copy the package configuration.

Then select each package in the list individually and hit Ctrl+p to add the package configuration to each package.

Click the disk icon to save your changes and we’re done! Our package configuration has been added to each package with much less work than we initially went though.

Just be aware that if package configurations have not been enabled for the packages you added the package configuration to you will still need to complete that step for each package.

For more information on BI xPress just head over to PragmaticWorks.com or head here to download the free trial version of BI xPress. Enjoy!