Some of you may have visited the link to Microsoft’s whitepaper on the BI Metadata Toolkit only to find the referenced samples download link is not working. Many of us have always had a copy of the whitepaper, but not the samples download. We’ve received that missing download and are sharing it here. The folks at Microsoft are aware of the bad samples download link and are working to get that resolved.

The whitepaper focuses on sharing metadata between Microsoft’s BI tools and is a very good read. It touches on what is “metadata,” how can you use it, where to use it, and most importantly *why* you’d want to use it. Sarbanes-Oxley is mentioned and is important to consider when deploying SSIS solutions. Sarbanes-Oxley (a.k.a. the knee-jerk reaction to the Enron debacle), while broad in nature, basically boils down to enforcing accountability and separation of duties. The BI Metadata Toolkit can help in ensuring SOX compliance.

As part of the samples download, Microsoft includes the following tools:

  • Dependency Analyzer: loads into a database lineage data between SSIS, SSAS, and SQL Server
  • Dependecy Viewer: graphically see dependencies from the above tool
  • Data Source View: A DSV for use in Reporting Services (SSRS) to view dependency repository
  • Lineage Repository: A database called SSIS_META that can be used to house metadata from nearly any system
  • Reports
  • Report Model: For use with Report Builder to allow creating ad-hoc reports
  • Integration Services Samples: Sample packages to start auditing and viewing lineage on

BI Metadata Toolkit Whitepaper (.doc - 994 kb)
BI Metadata Toolkit Samples (.msi - 311 kb)