DTS Packages and SQL Server 2005 Express Version

text taken from: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-US/library/ms143706.aspx

hope this helps,
Nito

Thanks for the information Nito. I have 8 SQL 2000 DTS packages that handle importing and exporting to our core application from an external application. We have been requiring customers to purchase a server with Small Biz Server 2003 Premium (with SQL Server 2000) and a workstation that access the SQL table for reporting functions. We were hopeful that for some of our smaller customers that we could cut the hardware costs in half by putting everything on a high powered XP Pro workstation and use SQL Express. But if I understand what I read in the article that cant be done with the 2005 Express Edition. The DTS packages do not need be designed in Express, but they need to be bundled with the database. Any ideas?  

You could develop stored procedures to do your export/import of the data. Not sure how complex your DTS's are but if you're doing simple copy data from you table to the other you can easily run do the same steps with SQL

INSERT INTO server.database.dbo.table1
SELECT FIELD1, FIELD2, FIELD3
FROM server1.database.dbo.table1

Hope this helps.

The DTS are fairly complex, the data is coming from a remote UNIX via FTP in various comma delimited files and delineated with the 5th character in the filename. Application logic determines which package is called and then an acknowledgement file is sent back to the UNIX and log files are created. All of this is bundled into the DTS package and some triggers on the tables. So rewriting all of that is pretty much out of the question. Thanks for all of your help. Do you know if DTS packages get saved with a database during a backup?