Update 2: I had originally labeled this post as a "bug," but upon further reflection and observation, I can see that there is an internal logic too it--it's just not the way I expected it to be or would prefer it to be.

Unless I'm totally missing something, I've uncovered a pretty annoying bug design feature in the Package Configuration wizard in BIDS (the SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence Design Studio). Whenever you walk through the wizard it throws away any values that you've placed in the dtsConfig XML file.

If I understand this correctly, the idea with these configurations is that we can edit the XML files directly to control different values in different environments--one of those environments being the development environment in which I'm running BIDS. So based on that I have to conclude that this is a bug. Shouldn't the Package Configuration Wizard remember the values in the ConfiguredValue tag in the dtsConfig file?

It appears that I'm going to have to stick with editing these files by hand and never using the Package Configuration wizard. Anyone want to develop a utility for this, a dtsConfig editor? Should be simple enough, since 99% of the time you only need to map to the Value attribute of variables. I may find that my configurations get more complex, though, when I get deeper into the guts of my package development. Or maybe some XSLT to resynch the lost values from a backup copy after using the wizard?

Am I missing something?

Update 1: it appears what the wizard writes to the dtsConfig file is the current value as set in the BIDS environment. I suppose this means that you need to set your development-time values in BIDS, even though that will result in those values being stored inside of the package (which I'm not wild about). I have concluded that the package wizard remaps and rewrites the whole configuration each time you click the Finish button. What I saw as a "bug" was based on a misunderstanding of how it works; now that I understand it better, I know what to watch out for, but I'm not in love with it.

Dan

See also this Package Configuration issue [1].