For years I’ve dream’t of having one set of tools for developing SSIS packages! not a lot to ask really and  great step towards this from Microsoft was decoupling the development IDE from the main SQL Server install to produce the standalone SSDT (SQL Server data tools)

But like most people I work in an environment which has legacy versions for SQL Server in production, but equally like most tech folk (giddy kids wanting new toys) I always try and use the most current and exciting  version of VS.  This however proves a problem when developing for SSIS, for example if you developed a SSIS package in VS 2013 you’d not be able to deploy this correctly to a SQL Server 2012 version of Integration services catalog.  In the past this resulted in having two IDE’s installed, SSDT 2012 (VS shell) for any 2012 catalog development and VS 2013 installed for other work.

Well good news, some people might not be aware that in  VS 2015 you can now change the package development version  directly in the package properties.  This will allow you to upgrade and downgrade essentially with a few click. I do hope in the future Microsoft releases a version of VS where the version of integration services you’re  deploying to is irreverent, but till that day this will act as a good workaround and remove the requirement of having multiple IDE’s being installed.

How can you do this:

Simply right click on your project and select properties

Once on the properties screen, select Configuration properties in the left hand pane and then select the target server version you require. 

This possibly might seem trivial to most people but for some like me who’s a little OCD and hates having different tools for different version, the invention of VS 2015 and SSMS 2016 where you can now work with any version of SQL Server with just two IDE’s is a god send.