Hugo Tap asked me on Twitter earlier today whether or not there existed a SSIS Dataflow Destination component that enabled one to MERGE data into a table rather than INSERT it. Its a common request so I thought it might be useful to summarise the current state of play as regards a MERGE destination for SSIS.

Firstly, there is no MERGE destination component in the box; that is, when you install SSIS no MERGE Destination will be available. That being said the SSIS team have made available a MERGE destination component via Codeplex which you can get from http://sqlsrvintegrationsrv.codeplex.com/releases/view/19048.

I have never used it so cannot vouch for its usefulness although judging by some of the reviews you might not want to set your expectations too high. Your mileage may vary.

In the past it has occurred to me that a built-in way to provide MERGE from the SSIS pipeline would be highly valuable. I assume that this would have to be provided by the database into which you were merging hence in March 2010 I submitted the following two requests to Connect:

• BULK MERGE (111 votes at the time of writing)
• [SSIS] BULK MERGE Destination (15 votes)

If you think these would be useful feel free to vote them up and add a comment.

Lastly, this one is nothing to do with SSIS but if you want to perform a minimally logged MERGE using T-SQL Sunil Agarwal has explained how at Minimal logging and MERGE statement.

@Jamiet