Today’s post is from Carla Sabotta, lead writer for the SQL Server Integration Services team.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The SSIS Designer in BIDS tries to connect to each data source that is used by your package to validate the metadata associated with sources and destinations. There may be times when you can’t connect to your data sources or the connection is slow. This slows validation and prolongs a package startup or opening a package data flow.
In previous versions of SSIS, you worked around this issue by setting the entire package to work offline. In SQL Server “Denali”, you can turn off the slow and unavailable connections by setting the connection managers to work offline. You configure a connection manager to work offline, by right-clicking it in the Connection Managers area of SSIS Designer and then clicking Work Offline .
When you set a connection manager to work offline, it will remain offline while the project is open. When you close the project, the connection manager is reset to work online.
For more information about troubleshooting package validation, see Troubleshooting Tools for Package Development in Books Online.