I decided to explore SSIS logging because I wanted to be able to insert custom data into the logging stream, specifically the date/time stamp of data files processed by SSIS packages.

One of the criticisms that I had received from my previous article

Copy-and-Paste SSIS Execution Monitoring with Failure-Alert Email[/url]

was that SSIS logging provided everything already and I should learn it rather than reinvent the wheel.

All five of the SSIS logging outputs contain the same exact data. My guess is that there are custom clients that can read and display each type of log output. For all practical purposes it doesn't matter which one you use. The text file is the easiest to use because you can just open it in notepad. Another approach would be to write an SSRS report to view the sys.sysssislog table.

I still don't think you can store the file timestamp in the SSIS logging stream, which is very useful information if there is a possibility that your job might reprocess a file from the previous day if a new one hasn't replaced it.