Chapter 5 -- Understanding System and User Databases

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Chapter 5

About This Chapter

Before you begin creating and configuring user databases for your data, you need to achieve an understanding of the physical structure of SQL Server 2000 databases. Next, you need to understand how the transaction log is organized and functions. Finally, you need to become familiar with the most commonly used and queried system tables within the system and database catalogs. This includes how to query these catalogs for meta data regarding system and user databases.

Before You Begin

To complete this chapter, you must have

• A computer that meets or exceeds the minimum hardware requirements listed in Table 2.1, "Hardware Requirements," in Lesson 1 of Chapter 2.
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server running on your computer on an NTFS partition.
• A computer configured as a server or a domain controller in the SelfPacedSQL domain.
• Installed a default and at least one named instance of SQL Server 2000 (see Chapter 2).