Hi Siddarth,

Thanks for a very interesting article!

In the list of tools I would suggest something that most BI developer forget, although it might save them lots of time, certainly for SSIS projects and to a lesser extend for SSAS / SSRS projects (depending of the complexity): Source Version Control. After all, even if we are strictly speaking no software developers, we build custom tailored systems for our customers and the same development rules should apply.

Since most projects I've seen so far imply a single developer or a very small team per project, I've been searching the web for some cheap, or even better, free Source Version Control tools. I've found and recently tested a pair of open source and freely downloadable tools allowing to set up basic Version Control:

TortoiseSVN[/url], a Windows Shell extension and AnkhSVN[/url], a plug-in for Visual Studio. They just take a few minutes to install and, at first use, 1/2 a day to get started with the concept. Once used to work with it, you'll soon ask yourself how you could ever miss it!