Data Transformation Services

As the existence of the Upsizing Wizard indicates, developers have needed tools that allow them to migrate data from one system to another. Often these developers have had to build customized solutions to translate data between the various systems. These customized solutions usually involved an investment of a great deal of time and effort on the part of the developers who built the solution as well as the end users who had to oversee the process. This is because these solutions face a major hurdle: They must connect multiple data sources together, account for the major differences between the systems, and integrate the methods used to access the data in the disparate systems. In order to alleviate some of the problems associated with accessing multiple heterogeneous data sources, Microsoft developed OLE DB, a component of Universal Data Access, their new strategy for accessing information across the enterprise. OLE DB provides an infrastructure that allows developers to connect to multiple, unrelated data sources using identical code.