Professional Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Administration

1.2. SQL Server Architecture

In older editions of SQL Server, you had to use many different tools depending on the function you were trying to perform. In SQL Server 2008, the challenge for Microsoft was to avoid increasing the number of management tools while increasing the features and products that ship with SQL Server. They accomplished this by creating one tool for business-intelligence development (Business Intelligence Development Studio—BIDS) and another for management of the entire platform, including business intelligence and the database engine (SQL Server Management Studio). BIDS is based on a lightweight version of Visual Studio 2008. A new end-user report development tool is also added—Report Designer.

SQL Server envelops a large surface now. It can act as a reporting tool and store your OLAP cubes. It can also perform your ETL services through SQL Server Integration Services. Many people just use SQL Server for its classic use: to store data. SQL Server 2008 can run on Windows XP, 2000, Vista, and Windows Server 2003 and 2008. Tools such as SharePoint and Office quickly integrate on top of SQL Server and can provide an easy user interface (UI) for SQL Server data. This book covers administration on each of these tiers.

1.2.1. Transaction Log and Database Files

The architecture of database and transaction log files remains unchanged from prior releases. The purpose of the transaction log is to ensure that all committed transactions will be persisted in the database ...