Saving a DTS Package to Meta Data Services

Save your Data Transformation Services (DTS) package to Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Meta Data Services if you plan to track package version, meta data, and data lineage information.

You can save versions of a package to Meta Data Services. If a package has multiple versions, you can display a version history in SQL Server Enterprise Manager and open the version you want. Otherwise, the latest package version is opened. You can also view version information for packages saved to Meta Data Services with Meta Data Services viewing tools supplied with SQL Server Enterprise Manager.

When you save a package to Meta Data Services, the DTS package protection options are not available. If package security is important, consider saving the package to SQL Server or as a structured storage file instead.

If you create a package outside of DTS Designer (for example, in Microsoft Visual Basic®), you can specify the repository database to which you want to save the package data (for example, Microsoft Access).

Versioning

DTS Designer maintains version information about each saved package, and this information can be stored in Meta Data Services. Version information for each package includes:

• A package GUID, a globally unique identifier (GUID) that identifies the package.
  
  
• A version GUID, a GUID that identifies the package version.

When a package is first created, the package GUID and version GUID are the same, and there is only one version. If changes made to a package are saved, the package is versioned, and the new version is assigned a different version GUID than that of the previously saved version. Rather than the last version overwriting the previous one (as in a typical save operation), each package version is preserved.

When you save a package to Meta Data Services, version information can be linked to saved meta data by using the scanning options. In addition, data lineage information can be saved for a package. These features let you track:

• Changes to the package meta data, such as changes to table columns and keys (displayed in the Meta Data Browser in SQL Server Enterprise Manager) across package versions.
  
  
• Which package version produced a particular set of transformations. To do this, use the data lineage lookup feature in SQL Server Enterprise Manager.

To save a DTS package to Meta Data Services