SQL Server 2008 - A Quick Overview

SQL Server 2008 Overview

SQL Server 2008 delivers on Microsoft’s Data Platform vision by helping your organization manage any data, any place any time. So before we discuss more about SQL Server 2008 new features, let’s talk about what is Microsoft Data Platform Vision?

Microsoft Data Platform Vision

Today we live in the world of information explosion where in we come across many types of data on a day to day basis. We store, retrieve and transact data into different types such as images, video, audio, digital information, sensor information from RFID tags and the list goes on. As we now know that organizations have become considerably large with the global presence and due to this the need to make data more secure and regulatory compliance has become mandatory. Also the data stored should be available Any Where - Any Time.

Today the user and application has become completely mobile and we want our data/information to be viewed on any device -any time - anywhere. So the question here is how to deal with this kind of complexities and manage the information explosion in an effective and efficient way.

The answer to the above challenges is Microsoft Data Platform Vision. It helps organization to overcome the challenges of information explosion by providing a solution that organization can use to store many types of data, including the following

1. XML
2. e-mail
3. time/calendar
4. File
5. Documents and Geospatial

SQL Server 2008 provides reach set of services to interact with the data , query the data , performing data analysis , reporting, integration and robust synchronization. Above all , users can access information on any device.

What SQL Server 2008 Delivers?

SQL Server 2008 delivers on Microsoft’s Data Platform vision by helping your organization manage any data, any place, any time. It enables you to store data from structured, semi-structured, and unstructured documents such as images, music, documents directly within the database.

Top New Features

• Use Resource Governor to manage concurrent workloads
• Enforce policy compliance consistently across the enterprise with the Policy-Based Management
• Reduce storage requirements and increase query performance with data compression and Sparse Columns
• Protect sensitive data with Transparent Data Encryption and advanced auditing
• Troubleshoot, tune, and monitor SQL Server 2008 instances across the enterprise with Performance System Analysis
• Build high performance analysis solutions with scalability, performance, data mining and user interface enhancements in SQL Server Analysis Services
• Take advantage of improved performance, usability, visualization, and integration with the 2007 Microsoft Office system in SQL Server Reporting Services
• Integrate location-enabled applications through support for spatial data 

 

Top New Security Features

· Use the Declarative Management Framework to help enforce security polices for data services across the enterprise.

· Encrypt data without modifying applications, using Transparent Data Encryption.

· Employ enterprise-wide encryption solutions with Extensible Key Management and Hardware Security Modules.

· Audit all actions with the new Audit object.

Top New High Availability Features

• Recover corrupt data pages from a mirror server with enhanced database mirroring features. Watch the short demo.
• Take advantage of failover clustering enhancements in Windows Server 2008.
• Add new nodes to a peer-to-peer replication solution without taking replication offline.
• Improve restore times, and reduce backup volumes with new support for backup compression.
• Improve concurrency with locking enhancements.
• Reduce downtime for hardware maintenance with hot-add CPU capabilities.
• Use Resource Governor to proactively control workload prioritization.

Top New Performance and Scalability Features

• Take control of resource allocation with Resource Governor.
• Troubleshoot, tune, and monitor SQL Server 2008 instances across the enterprise with Performance Data Collector.
• Build high-performance analysis solutions with scalability and performance enhancements in SQL Server Analysis Services.  Take advantage of on-demand processing and better performance with the re-engineered reporting engine for SQL Server Reporting Services.
• Increase extract, transform, and load (ETL) performance in SQL Server Integration Services with scalable lookup tasks.

Happy Learning…..I will be sharing few more information in my next article.

Harsh Shah
(Sr. Consultant)