Dear Technical Gurues I have a case where I am suggesting to use SSIS rather than web services. We have a Unix based system on a certain server and another web based system on ASP.NET and SQL Server on a separate system. both systems should integrate with each other using files and bulk loads ussing XSV files however the volume of data is not that much. the architects of the asp.net application are following the SOA architecture by exposing web services to look for the files and then loading it to the database. However I am suggesting to use SSIS as it is a more suitable technology for bulk loads and file based integration. Therefore I would like to specifically know how to compare between SSIS and Web services or in general between ETL and SOA and know whether my argument is valid or not Thanks

You can interact with WebServices from SSIS, then you can do whatever you want with the data but SSIS requires a separate install. Yes, SSIS scales from small to large files whereas it is not practical to shovel large volumes of data over the HTTP(s) pipe. Arthur My Blog

When it comes to integration of disparate systems for moving data what approach you select really depends on the volume of data being moved. In you case, as you say the volume of data is not much, difference between the two approaches i.e. web services and SSIS will not be substantial. But systems are always designed keeping scalability and flexibility in mind. In which case SSIS would be perfect to handle bigger loads in the future and will be more responsive to the bussiness changes. Cause SSIS is geared towards been a ETL tool and hence comes with a rich set of tools like notifications, connection managers etc which are difficult to handle in a be-spoke web service. Check this which has a related discussion.http://btsbee.wordpress.com/