thanks for the reply Tim.

I quite like the sound of defining a variable and setting that at run time. :w00t: I think I will investigate using a variable further. I can see that working quite well be it with package stored in an msdb on a local dev machine and then deployed to a server, or with packages reference by files paths.

The main aim of what I am trying to acheive is to be able to develop packages A,B & C locally all at once and then deploy to the server using the deployment manifest, without the need for deploying packages B & C and then developing and deploying package A.

By the sounds of it I'm not too far off. It's not something that is really covered in the MCTS training kit! I just want to start off down the correct path, especially as I'm likely to start doing a lot of work in this area and I don't want to develop something that is fundementally wrong in it's process.

Thanks Tim, I really appreciate the response

- any other ideas would also be useful to hear.......