Zip Utility Compression Test

No matter how much storage space you have, it’s never seems to be enough.  This is when file compression can become crucial to saving space on your file system, moving files quickly between servers and performing day-to-day tasks.  With just a quick search there are an overwhelming number of file compression utilities on the market.  This post outlines a test of 3 popular utilities for both file compression and execution time.

Dynamically Zipping Files in SSIS

There are a number of posts and articles regarding zipping files in SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). I have found it fairly easy to accomplish this task using an open source zip utility called 7-zip. This utility allows file compression to be executed from the command line, making it very easy to utilize the ‘Execute Process Task’ control flow. 7-zip allows packing and unpacking of ZIP, 7z, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR and typically provides better compression than WinZip. In this post, I will explain how to dynamically zip files with dynamically defined connection managers and attributes.