Microsoft SQL Server database support

Enterprise Data Management

In today's connected world, data and the systems that manage that data must always be secure yet available to your users. With SQL Server 2005, users and information technology (IT) professionals across your organization will benefit from reduced application downtime, increased scalability and performance, and tight yet flexible security controls. SQL Server 2005 also includes many new and improved capabilities to help make your IT staff more productive. SQL Server 2005 includes key enhancements to enterprise data management in the following areas:

 

• Manageability
• Availability
• Scalability
• Security

  

Fast Recovery

SQL Server 2005 improves the availability of SQL Server databases with a new and faster recovery option. Users can reconnect to a recovering database after the transaction log has been rolled forward. Earlier versions of SQL Server required users to wait until incomplete transactions had rolled back, even if the users did not need to access the affected parts of the database.

Dedicated Administrator Connection

SQL Server 2005 introduces a dedicated administrator connection to access a running server even if the server is not responding or is otherwise unavailable. This allows you to execute diagnostic functions or Transact-SQL statements so you can troubleshoot problems on a server. The connection is activated by members of the sysadmin fixed server role and is only available through the SQLCMD command prompt tool either locally or from a remote computer.

Replication

Replication is designed to increase data availability by distributing the data across multiple database servers. Availability is increased by allowing applications to scale out the SQL Server read workload across databases. SQL Server 2005 offers enhanced replication using a new peer-to-peer model that provides a new topology in which databases can be synchronized transactionally with any identical peer database.

Scalability

Scalability advancements such as table partitioning, snapshot isolation, and 64-bit support will enable you to build and deploy your most demanding applications using SQL Server 2005. The partitioning of large tables and indexes significantly enhances query performance against very large databases.

Table and Index Partitioning

Table and index partitioning eases the management of large databases by facilitating the management of the database in smaller, more manageable chunks. While the concept of partitioning data across tables, databases, and servers is not new to the world of databases, SQL Server 2005 provides a new capability for the partitioning of tables across filegroups in a database. Horizontal partitioning allows for the division of a table into smaller groupings based on a partitioning scheme. Table partitioning is designed for very large databases, from hundreds of gigabytes to terabytes and beyond.

Security

SQL Server 2005 makes significant enhancements to the security model of the database platform, with the intention of providing more precise and flexible control to enable tighter security of the data. A considerable investment has been made in a number of features to provide a high level of security for your enterprise data including the following:

 

• Enforcing policies for SQL Server login passwords in the authentication space.
• Providing for more granularity in terms of specifying permissions at various scopes in the authorization space.
• Allowing for the separation of owners and schemas in the security management space.

  

Authorization

A new security model in SQL Server 2005 allows administrators to manage permissions at a granular level and at a designated scope, making management of permissions easier as well as ensuring that the principle of least privileges is upheld. SQL Server 2005 lets you specify a context under which statements in a module execute. This feature also acts as an excellent mechanism for granular permission management.

Authentication

SQL Server 2005 clustering supports Kerberos authentication against a SQL Server 2005 virtual server. Administrators can specify Microsoft Windows-style policies on standard logins so that a consistent policy is applied across all accounts in the domain.

>Native Encryption

SQL Server 2005 supports encryption capabilities within the database itself, fully integrated with a key management infrastructure. By default, client/server communications are encrypted. To centralize security assurance, server policy can be defined to reject unencrypted communications.

>SQL Server and Trustworthy Computing

The Microsoft Trustworthy Computing initiative outlines a framework that defines the steps necessary to support more secure computing as well as measures that help you deploy and maintain a more secure environment. These steps help to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data and systems at every phase of the software life cycle—from design, to delivery, to maintenance. To uphold the four tenets of the Trustworthy Computing initiative, Microsoft and the SQL Server team have addressed the following issues:

1. Secure by design. The SQL Server development team conducted multiple security audits and spent more than two months studying SQL Server components and the interaction between them. For each potential security threat, the team did a threat analysis to evaluate the issue and completed additional design and testing work to neutralize potential security issues. Because of these design efforts, SQL Server 2005 includes many new server security features.
2. Secure by default. Upon installation, SQL Server 2005 chooses the right set of configuration values for all setup options, ensuring that when a new system is installed, it will be in a secure state by default.
3. Secure in deployment. Microsoft has created content to help organizations deploy SQL Server using the proper security credentials and to fully understand the steps and permissions required. SQL Server deployment tools provide the information necessary to understand the decisions you need to make during deployment. Security updates are easy to find and install—and if you choose the option, the updates install automatically. Tools are also available to help you assess and manage security risks across organizations.

   

>Developer Productivity

SQL Server 2005 includes many new technologies that bring significant increases in developer productivity. From .NET Framework support to tight integration with Visual Studio, these features provide developers with the ability to more easily create secure, robust database applications at a lower cost. SQL Server 2005 enables developers to take advantage of existing skills across a variety of development languages while providing an end-to-end development environment for the database. Native XML capabilities also allow developers to build new classes of connected applications across any platform or device.
Enhancements for developer productivity include the following:

 

• Expanded language support
• Improved development tools
• Extensibility
• Improved data access
• XML and Web services
• Application framework

  

Expanded Language Support

Because the common language runtime (CLR) is hosted in the database engine, developers can choose from a variety of familiar languages to develop database applications, including Transact-SQL, Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, and Microsoft Visual C# .NET. Additionally, CLR hosting provides developers with increased flexibility with user-defined types and functions. The CLR also provides opportunities to use non-Microsoft code for rapid database application development.

CLR/.NET Framework Integration

With the release of SQL Server 2005, database programmers can now take full advantage of the Microsoft .NET Framework class library and modern programming languages to implement functionality within the server. Using CLR integration, you can code your stored procedures, functions, and triggers in the .NET Framework language of your choice. Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and the C# programming language both offer object-oriented constructs, structured exception handling, arrays, namespaces, and classes. Additionally, the .NET Framework provides thousands of classes and methods that have extensive built-in capabilities that you can easily use on the server side. Many tasks that were awkward or difficult to perform in Transact-SQL can be better accomplished by using managed code; additionally, two new types of database objects—aggregates and user-defined types—are available. You can now better use the knowledge and skills that you have already acquired to write in-process code. In short, SQL Server 2005 enables you to extend the database server to more easily perform appropriate computation and operations on the back end.
This integration between SQL Server and the CLR provides several major benefits:

1. Enhanced programming model. Programming languages that are compatible with the .NET Framework are in many respects richer than Transact-SQL, offering constructs and capabilities that were previously not available to SQL Server developers.
2. Enhanced safety and security. Managed code runs in a CLR environment, hosted by the database engine. This allows .NET Framework database objects to be safer and more secure than the extended stored procedures available in earlier versions of SQL Server.
3. User-defined types and aggregates. Two new database objects that expand the storage and querying capabilities of SQL Server are enabled by hosting the CLR.
4. Common development environment. Database development is integrated into the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 development environment. You can use the same tools for developing and debugging database objects and scripts that you use to write middle-tier or client-tier .NET Framework components and services.
5. Performance and scalability. Because managed code compiles to native code prior to execution, you can achieve significant performance increases in some scenarios.

By using languages such as Visual Basic .NET and C#, you can capitalize on CLR integration to write code that has more complex logic and is more suited for computation tasks. Additionally, Visual Basic .NET and C# offer object-oriented capabilities such as encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. You can easily organize related code into classes and namespaces, which means that you can more easily organize and maintain your code investments when you are working with large amounts of code. The ability to logically and physically organize code into assemblies and namespaces is a huge benefit that allows you to better find and relate different pieces of code in a large database implementation.

 

Managed code is more efficient than Transact-SQL at processing numbers and managing complicated execution logic, and provides extensive support for string handling, regular expressions, and so on. Also, with the functionality that is available in the .NET Framework class library, you have full access to thousands of prebuilt classes and routines that you can access easily from any stored procedure, trigger, or user-defined function. Everything from improved string-handling functions, math functions, date operations, access to system resources, advanced encryption algorithms, file access, image processing, and XML data manipulation is easily accessible from managed stored procedures, functions, triggers, and aggregates.

 

One of the major benefits of managed code is type safety. Before managed code is executed, the CLR performs several checks through a process known as verification to ensure that the code is safe to run. For example, the code is checked to ensure that memory is not read that has not been written to.

Transact-SQL Enhancements

Transact-SQL has long been the basis for all SQL Server programmability. SQL Server 2005 provides many new language capabilities for developing scalable database applications. These enhancements include error handling, new recursive query capabilities, and support for new SQL Server Database Engine capabilities. Transact-SQL enhancements in SQL Server 2005 increase your expressive powers in query writing, allowing you to improve the performance of your code and extend your error management capabilities. The continuous effort that is being put into enhancing Transact-SQL shows a firm belief in its significant role in SQL Server.

>Improved Development Tools

Developers will be able to use one development tool for Transact-SQL, XML, Multidimensional Expressions (MDX), and XML for Analysis (XMLA). Integration with the Visual Studio development environment will provide more efficient development and debugging of line-of-business and business intelligence (BI) applications.

Business Intelligence

SQL Server 2005 furthers Microsoft leadership in the area of business intelligence (BI) through innovations in scalability, data integration, development tools, and rich analytics. SQL Server 2005 enables scalable BI by putting critical, timely information in the hands of employees across your organization. From the CEO to the information worker, employees will be able to quickly and easily harness data to make better decisions faster. The comprehensive integration, analysis, and reporting capabilities of SQL Server 2005 enable companies to extend the value of their existing applications, regardless of the underlying platform. BI features include enhancements in the following areas:

 

• An end-to-end integrated business intelligence platform
• Integration Services
• Analysis Services
• Reporting Services
• Integration with the Microsoft Office System

End-to-End Integrated Business Intelligence Platform

SQL Server 2005 is a complete BI platform that provides the features, tools, and functionality to build both classic and innovative kinds of analytical applications. The following information introduces the tools that you will use to build an analytical application, and highlights new functionality that makes it easier than ever to build and manage complex BI systems.

The SQL Server 2005 BI toolset delivers end-to-end BI application integration:

1. Design. Business Intelligence Development Studio is the first integrated development environment designed for the BI developer. Built on Visual Studio 2005, Business Intelligence Development Studio delivers a rich, integrated, professional development platform for BI system developers. Debugging, source control, and script and code development are available for all components of the BI platform.
2. Integrate. SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) has been rewritten to perform complex data integration, transformation, and synthesis at high speed for very large data volumes. Business Intelligence Development Studio makes building and debugging packages positively fun. Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services work together to present a seamless view of data from heterogeneous sources.
3. Analyze. Microsoft Data Mining has always been easy to use. Now it is even better with the addition of important new algorithms, including Association Rules, Time Series, Regression Trees, Sequence Clustering, Neural Network, and Naïve Bayes. SQL Server 2005 blurs the lines between relational and multidimensional databases. You can store data in the relational database, in the multidimensional database, or use the new Proactive Cache feature to get the best of both worlds. Important new analytical capabilities have been added to Analysis Services cubes as well; these include key performance indicator (KPI) framework, MDX scripts, and other built-in advanced business analytics. The Reporting Services report delivery and management framework enables easy distribution of complex analytics to the widest possible audience.
4. Report. Reporting Services extends the Microsoft BI platform to reach the business user who needs to consume the analysis. Reporting Services is an enterprise-managed reporting environment, embedded and managed through Web services. Reports can be personalized and delivered in a variety of formats, with a range of interactivity and printing options. Complex analyses can reach a broad audience through the distribution of reports as a data source for downstream BI. New with SQL Server 2005 is the reporting tool, Report Builder.
5. Manage. SQL Server Management Studio integrates the management of all SQL Server 2005 components. BI practitioners will benefit from this extension of the server abilities you expect from the relational engine—scalability, reliability, availability, programmability, and so on—to the full set of BI platform components.