Bimling with BIDS Helper
BIDS is an abbreviation for Business Intelligence Development Studio. The area where Microsoft Business Intelligence developers and consultants spend a lot of hours working in.
BIDS Helper is a free indispensable Visual Studio.Net add-in with features that extend and enhance the functionality of BIDS.
Recently a new beta version (1.4.4.0) was released which includes the Biml package generator.
Biml (Business Intelligence Markup Language) is an XML-based language that allows you to describe your BI solution in a declarative fashion.
Today I took a test-drive and created my first package.
The xml editor has some nice features: smooth intelliSense and blue curlylines to indicate possible errors.
And when you right click the Biml document in Solution Explorer you can select Expand Biml File and the package(s) is/are created:
Conclusion: a very promising addition to BIDS Helper and I'll enjoy diving into it more. Especially the possibility to use Biml scripts to automate package creation.
