Integrating data from many sources

The many different systems and processes that make up an organization
create data in all shapes and forms. This data usually ends up stored in the
individual systems that generated it — but without any standard format.
Fortunately, SQL Server has a component — SQL Server Integration Services
(SSIS) — that can connect to these many different data sources and pull
the data back into the central data warehouse. As the data moves from the
source systems to the Data Warehouse, SSIS can also transform it into a standard
useful format. The whole process is known as Extract, Transform, and
Load (ETL).