Chapter 2: SQL Server Fundamentals

Overview

Where does SQL Server fit in the grand scheme of business applications? At one time, this was a simple question with a simple answer. Today, SQL Server is at the core of many different types of applications and business solutions large and small. Just last week I was fortunate enough to attend a developers' conference on the Microsoft Corporate Campus in Redmond, Washington, and sit at the feet of the Chairman and Chief Architect of Microsoft, Bill Gates. He spoke of his vision for the next generation of products. He said that the current evolution of software technologies is as significant to the industry as was the first generation of Windows. He talked about the importance of XML web services, smart clients, and the pieces that make them all work together. The new generation of servers and operating systems will blend file storage and document and data management in a seamless, uniform approach; and at the core of all of this Microsoft technology is SQL Server. Under the hood, this is not the same SQL Server as it was in years past. SQL Server 2005 is a complex, multipurpose data storage engine, capable of doing some very sophisticated things. This new-and-improved SQL Server can manage complex binary streams, hierarchies, cubes, files, and folders in addition to text, numbers, and other simple data types. Mr. Gates didn't have a perfect answer to every question posed but he certainly had a clear vision for the future of Microsoft products and related technologies — and that future includes SQL Server playing a major role.

For the purposes of this book we're only concerned with using SQL Server to store and manage relational data. This is what it was designed for years ago — and what it does even better today. However, SQL Server 2005 can also be used to store and manage application objects in the form of XML. On the surface, SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2000 behave much the same way for the same Transact-SQL statements. For our purposes, the most significant differences are simply the tools that you use, not the statements you use to perform operations. The SQL part of SQL Server has evolved some over the years but fundamentally is not so different.