Microsoft® Business Intelligence For Dummies®

Chapter 8. Meeting SQL Server

In This Chapter

• Getting to know SQL Server

• Exploring the different versions of SQL Server

• Checking out the SQL Server components

• Going through the SQL Server installation

• Discovering the tools that work with the SQL Server components

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

—Warren Buffett

Consulting in a technological field often feels like traveling among different worlds inhabited by creatures who speak different alien languages. I've found that entering new "technology worlds" is often frustrating — because the people who live in those worlds know the ropes, rarely leave, and tend to expect a newcomer to know what they already know. Not that I blame anyone. Living in a technology world is like living in a cultural area. For example, we lived in Boston for a number of years — and many of our friends' families had never lived anywhere else. Some family member, generations before, had settled in the area, and the following generations never decided to leave. Many families had such deep roots that they never moved farther than a few blocks from the neighborhoods that they grew up in.

Being newcomers to Boston, we found it frustrating because often the neighborhood streets weren't marked with names — the general feeling was that you should "just know" how to get somewhere if you were going there. When we'd ask for directions (which was rather frequently), we'd be given landmarks with the usual remark that ...