Visual Studio .NET offers several deployment projects: Setup Projects, Web Setup Projects, Merge Module Projects, and Cab projects. Setup Projects and Web Setup Projects produce an .msi file that can be installed by the built-in Windows Installer. Merge Module Projects are reusable deployment projects, and Cab Projects are used to deploy ActiveX controls.
Licensed components created in .NET are validated by the License Manager at runtime. Licensed components are set up by adding the LicenseProvider attribute to the class.
The Global Assembly Cache (GAC) supports side-by-side versioning of assemblies, allowing calls to be placed to different assembly versions on the same physical server.
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and WMI Query Language (WQL) can query performance and driver information, which can be used to monitor the health of an application or a machine.
Clustered and non-clustered indexes increase performance of queries to database tables. Columns used in a table join, with clauses and unique identifiers, are great candidates for indexing. Clustered indexes are automatically created when a primary key is defined in SQL Server and can appear only once in each table. Non-clustered indexes can appear multiple times, but should not be overused because they create a physical representation of the index, thus increasing the database size.
There are four main types of partitions: horizontal, vertical, disk, and database partitions. Horizontal partitions divide a table based on its rows. Vertical partitions divide a table based on its columns. Disk partitions divide database tables across multiple physical disk drives. Database partitions (also called federated databases) divide database tables across multiple servers hosting different instances of SQL Server.
Denormalizing database tables introduces redundancy into a data model, but can increase performance of queries that perform multiple joins. Denormalization is based on tradeoff and is typically seen in reporting databases and data warehouses.
