Using the Dynamics SL Connection Manager
SSIS Integration Toolkit for Dynamics SL includes an SSIS Connection Manager component to help you establish connections to Microsoft Dynamics SL web services.
To add a new Dynamics SL connection to your SSIS package, right-click the Connection Manager area, and choose "New Connection..." from the context menu.
You will be prompted with the "Add SSIS Connection Manager" window, where you can select "DynamicsSL" and click "Add..." to create the connection.
The Dynamics SL Connection Manager contains the following tabs:
- General
- Advanced Settings
- More Info
General Page
The Connection tab of the Dynamics SL Connection Manager allows you to specify connection string settings.
- Server Information
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- Service URL
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The Service URL field allows you to specify the address of where your Dynamics SL web services are located.
- Company
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The Company field allows you to specify the company to connect to.
- Authentication
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The authentication section allows you to specify your login credentials to the web server, whether by using a Windows account via Integrated Authentication or by specifying a User Name, Password, and Domain.
- Timeout
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Specify the number of seconds before a web service call will Timeout.
- Test Connection
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After all the connection information has been provided, you may click "Test Connection" to test if the user can successfully authenticate with the server.
Advanced Settings Page
The Advanced Settings tab of Dynamics SL Connection Manager allows you to specify some advanced and optional settings for the connection.
- Optional Settings
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- Retry on Intermittent Errors
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This is an option designed to help recover from possible intermittent outages or disruption of service. It prevents the integration process from stopping due to temporary issues. Enabling this option will allow service calls to be retried upon certain types of failure. A service call may be retried up to 3 times before an exception is fired. Retries occur after 0 seconds, 15 seconds, and 60 seconds.
Warning: We have designed our retry feature carefully such that the retry should only occur when it is deemed safe to do so; however, in some occasions, such retry service calls could result in the creation of duplicate data.
- Ignore Certificate Errors
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This option can be used to ignore those SSL certificate errors when connecting to Dynamics SL Server, in case your SL server is using a temporary SSL certificate.
Warning: Enabling the "Ignore Certificate Errors" option is generally NOT recommended, particularly for production instances. Unless there is a strong reason to believe the connection is secure - such as the network communication is only happening in an internal infrastructure, this option should be unchecked for best security.
Note: When this option is enabled, it applies to all HTTP-based SSL connections in the same job process, it is not just limited to SL connections.
- Culture
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The Culture setting is used as a parameter by Dynamics SL's login web service. The value defaults to 'en-us'. You may need to change this value if your Dynamics SL is configured with a different Culture setting.
- Login Service EndPoint
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This setting points to the web service endpoint responsible for logging into Dynamics SL's web services and retrieving a valid session. You may specify the full URL or just the service endpoint name. Currently, only the LoginWindows endpoint is supported. The default value is 'Microsoft.Dynamics.SL.WebServices.Session.LoginWindows.svc'.
- Proxy Server Settings
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- Proxy Mode
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The Proxy Mode option allows you to specify how you want to configure the proxy server setting. There are three options available.
- No Proxy
- Auto-detect (Using system-configured proxy)
- Manual
- Proxy Server
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Using the Proxy Server option, you can provide a proxy server to connect to the SL server.
- Port
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The Port option allows you to specify the port number of the proxy server for the connection.
- Username (Proxy Server Authentication)
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The Username option (under Proxy Server Authentication) allows you to specify the proxy user account.
- Password (Proxy Server Authentication)
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The Password option (under Proxy Server Authentication) allows you to specify the proxy user's password.
Note: The Proxy Password is not included in the SL connection manager's ConnectionString property by default. This is done by design for security reasons. However, you can include it in your ConnectionString if you want to parameterize your connection manager. The format would be ProxyPassword=myProxyPassword; (make sure you have a semicolon as the last character). It can be anywhere in the ConnectionString.
More Info Page
The More Info tab shows some basic information about where to find support and additional information about the toolkit. On this page, you can find the version information of the toolkit.
Adding SL Components to the SSIS Toolbox
Before you can use the toolkit's data flow components, they must be added to your SSIS development environment's toolbox.
If you are using SQL Server 2012 or later, you should not need to do so, as SQL Server 2012 (or a later version) automatically lists all available pipeline components by scanning the system. Under certain circumstances, your SSIS toolbox might appear empty, in which case, you should click the SSIS Toolbox button (shown below) on the top-right corner of your Control Flow or Data Flow view.
You should now be able to use the component by dragging and dropping a component to the design surface of your SSIS data flow task.