SQL Server Integration Services (SQL Server 2016 new or improved features)

Three main areas of improvement are in cloud integration, connectivity and enhancements

Cloud integration mainly Azure data factory

As expected there is more integration with cloud.

• ADF can now orchestrate on-premises SSIS execution. In addition,
• ADF can now read from Azure data factory as data source though the ADF data flow task
• Ability for developers move data from on-Premise to Azure storage though Azure Storage Connector
• The ability to trigger Azure HDInsight jobs directly from SSIS
•  Azure commandlet to issue commands directly to Azure that will help developers manage and control Azure services

Connectivity

There are a lot of enhancements and new connectors supports added such as

•  Hadoop File System (HDFS),=
•  JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
•  Oracle/Teradata connector
• OData Version 4

Product improvements

As per Microsoft white paper

“SQL Server 2016 makes a number of significant enhancements to SSIS usability. For example, the package designer itself has been improved with many enhancements in the areas of resizing, dragging and dropping, and other features. SQL Server 2016 also supports package templates to facilitate code reuse and package setup. Also, SSIS packages can now be deployed incrementally, rather than having to deploy the entire project. Custom logging levels can also be configured on top of the current log level. Developers can easily and fully upgrade their projects to SQL Server 2016 SSIS compatibility with a click of a button. Further, you can now easily configure high-availability AlwaysOn for the SSIS catalog database directly in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) without the need to set it up manually.” (http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/C/2/FC21C981-4351-4434-A78A-3384CA7515BF/SQL_Server_2016_Deeper_Insights_Across_Data_White_Paper.pdf)

Again, this is good news for ETL developers.