Integration Manager 10 Bugginess: Data Sources, Relationships, and Scripts

I haven't been a big fan of Integration Manager lately because of various annoying bugs that were introduced during it's apparent re-write / migration to .NET (not sure exactly what all was changed) for version 10.

I have had to work on two different IM 10 integrations in the last few weeks, and seem to have discovered a theme regarding data sources, Relationships, and IM errors and instability.

From what I can tell, the Relationships feature / window in IM 10 has very poor error handling, causing it to throw unhandled errors or cause IM to crash if it runs into any type of problem. From what I have found, these manifest themselves in at least these two situations:

1) If you have an existing integration with multiple data sources and existing relationships, and then make a change to one or more of your data sources, the Relationships window throws errors and fails to open. For instance, if a column name in your data source is changed, you may get an error such as "Internal Error in System.Windows.Forms" dialog: "InvalidArgument=Value of '1' is not valid for 'index'."

2) If you have any type of problem with your data sources, such as an invalid grouping, the Relationships window will typically throw an error or even cause IM to crash.

The only workaround I have found is to remove all but one of your data sources so that the Relationships are removed. Then add your additional data sources back into your integration, verify that they don't have any issues, and then attempt to rebuild your relationships.

This issue seems to be consistent regardless of service pack--I'm able to consistently reproduce the problem on IM 10 with SP4.

A second issue I've run into consistently is that certain VB scripts will cause the script window to throw an error when you try and open your script. For example, you may have 10 lines of a script, then you click on Save, and when you try and re-open the script, you will get an error that prevents the script window from opening. I don't know if it is a formatting issue, a syntax issue, or if it's just a random parsing issue in the script window--I haven't had the patience to bother to research it.

In those situations, the only workaround I have found is to delete the script by using the "Remove" button, and then recreate it. If you don't have a backup of your script, tough luck.

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