SQL Server 2005 is the Microsoft's engine for the high end database market.
After a long wait since SQL Server 2000 was first available, last week Microsoft launched Microsoft SQL Server 2005 along with Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006. This time Microsoft promises a more secure by default, reliable, scalable and highly available relational database engine with improved performance and support for structured and unstructured (XML) data. The primary function of SQL Server 2005 is to allow organizations manage and analyze their data, with the extended benefits of reporting, business analytics, and data integration capabilities.
SQL Server 2005 makes significant enhancements to the security model of the database platform, providing more precise and flexible control to enable tighter security of the data. A considerable investment has been made in features that help to provide a high level of security for your enterprise data. These features include the advanced security of surface area reduction, data encryption, native encryption, authentication, granular permissions, and user and schema separations.
SQL Server includes Reporting Services, a comprehensive solution for creating, managing, and delivering both traditional, paper-oriented reports and interactive, Web-based reports.[1]
SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services provides for the first time, a unified and integrated view of all your business data as the foundation for all of your traditional reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP) analysis, Key Performance Indicator (KPI) scorecards, and data mining. [2]
SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (SSIS) is a new, highly scalable platform for building high performance data integration solutions, including extraction, transformation and load (ETL) packages for data warehousing. Integration Services aims to replace Data Transformation Services (DTS) to solve many of its difficulties and limitations, which was first introduced as a component of SQL Server 7.0. Integration Services includes graphical tools and wizards for building and debugging packages; tasks for performing workflow functions such as SQL command execution, FTP operations, and e-mail messaging; data sources and destinations for extracting and loading data; transformations for cleaning, aggregating, merging, and copying data; a management service for administering Integration Services; and application programming interfaces (APIs) for programming the Integration Services object model. [3]
SQL Server 2005 includes integrated Management Tools for advanced database management and tuning as well as tight integration with tools such as Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) and Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS). Standard data access protocols drastically reduce the time it takes to integrate data in SQL Server with existing systems. In addition, native Web service support is built into SQL Server to ensure interoperability with other applications and platforms.
SQL Server 2005 includes integrated Development Tools for the database engine, data extraction, transformation, and loading, data mining, OLAP, and reporting that are tightly integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio to provide end-to-end application development capabilities. Every major subsystem in SQL Server ships with its own object model and set of application program interfaces (APIs) to extend the data system in any direction that is unique to your business.
Replication Services adds data replication features for distributed or mobile data processing applications, high systems availability, scalable concurrency with secondary data stores for enterprise reporting solutions, and integration with heterogeneous systems, including existing Oracle databases. Notification Services is an advanced notification tool for the development and deployment of scalable applications that can deliver personalized, timely information updates to a variety of connected and mobile devices. [4]
Microsoft says upgrading to SQL Server 2005 will provide organizations of all sizes with the benefits of Data Assets, Increased Productivity, Reduced IT Complexity and Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
Microsoft also announced the free availability of SQL Server 2005 Express [5] and other tools in "Express" versions, which means they can be downloaded and used free of charge, but some of them are limited in capability and/or time-limited.
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