Short Version:
I have 7 SSISDeploymentManifest files I need to run. Is there a way to alter the SSISDeploymentManifiest file to per-populate Installation value?
Rant Version
At first running 7 deployments did not seem like much of a problem. But the part of the process where you “Select Installation Folder” for package dependencies is horribly designed.
First, you have to enter a network path here if you are not running from the server you will install to. This is because the dialog box makes sure path you enter a valid path… on the local machine you run the manifest from. But when the package is run it will need to also work for the server. (dumb huh?))
The next problem with this screen is that the field is read only. So I cannot just specify the path directly.
Second, the dialog box to “browse” won’t let me enter a path.
So… I have to browse my entire network (from home, over a vpn). That takes a long time.
Is there a way to alter the SSISDeploymentManifiest file to pre-populate this value?
No, dtsinstall doesn’t accept any command line arguments, pity. My first approach to this was to write a heavy, command line application that made repeated calls to dtutil to get things done. I never finished it but if you want to peek, it’s on codeplex
What I do like and prefer is a PowerShell script that handles my SSIS deployments now. Even if PowerShell isn’t your cup of tea, the concepts should apply to whatever .NET language you might want to use to handle it.
Attractive features of it are that it will create the folders in SQL Server for you and correctly deploy those packages into said folders. The other nice thing that might be of assistance to you is that if all the 7 deploys are in a common folder structure, the script walks the folder structure looking for manifests and deploys all the packages per manifest so you could conceivably deploy all with a single mouse click.