I really enjoyed your article. I'm very new to the SQL Server scene and so this was very helpful. Much of what I've been reading insofar as SSIS and ETL talks about working from flat files. This includes your article. Is there any reason for this (i.e. best practices, performance, security...)? Reason I ask is because we're considering using SQL server to build mini data mart with transaction data that resides on 2 distinct Oracle databases. Are there reasons why we should load data using a flat file instead of database links if we know that all the servers/databases are sitting behind our firewalls? Database links seem like the easiest, most efficient way to doing this but, in the short time I've been researching this, I haven't read many articles about people using database links for this. Thanks Again!