The fanfare from the US TechEd 2005 this past June was vintage Microsoft: lots of happy noise about miraculous products with tongue-in-cheek delivery dates, as many of us suppressed a yawn. But let's give credit where it's due; we've waited a long time for a new SQL Server, and the features Microsoft is delivering with its upgraded database technology are what we've asked for and then some. Here's a rundown on the features we'll find most useful.
1. There is now an XML data type
If there's any feature of SQL Server 2005 to jump up and down about, it's the new native XML data type. Why? Apart from the giant leap forward of an already Web-friendly agenda, the new type offers us design options that are atypical of Microsoft, which generally likes to do our designing for us.
The new XML data type:
• can be used in a table column
• can be used in a stored procedure, as a parameter or as a variable
• can store untyped data
• can check against a schema to see if data stored in a column typed as XML matches that associated schema (if there's no schema, the data is considered untyped)
And the mapping between XML data and relational data is bidirectional.
2. Distributed Management Objects (DMO) becomes SQL Server Management Objects (SMO)
SQL Server Management Objects (SMO) is a .NET Framework-based management framework that lets you create custom applications for server management. SMO (like DMO before it) allows you to handle columns, tables, databases, and servers as objects, programmatically -- and SMO supports SQL Server 2005's new features, like Service Broker.
SMOs are optimised, not instantiating objects fully (with all the properties retrieved) until the object is explicitly reference. You can also batch SQL commands, and create scripts to create objects.
Your custom server management apps can be used to manage SQL Server 7 in SQL Server 2000 systems as well.
3. Common Table Expresssions (CTEs) -- recursive queries
A common table expression (CTE) enables queries to be recursive. A CTE can be self-referential, with an upper limit on the incursions. You can use the CTE as a part of a WITH, in a SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT or DELETE command.
4. The Service Broker makes SQL Server traffic asynchronous
There's a front-end queuing system, and it changes everything. You can now manage SQL Server traffic by rendering it asynchronous with the new Service Broker feature. It enhances scalability by enabling your system to handle more traffic logically that it can handle physically. The Service Broker can be accessed via SQL commands and allows transactions to include queued events.
Those who know me well would never accuse me of being a Microsoft disciple, but this feature impresses me in no small measure and I'm pleased to call attention to it. Adding easily-configured asynchronicity to the data layer of an enterprise system is a boon to developers and opens up huge possibilities for Web apps. The economy with which those apps can now scale can't be overstated. Service Broker alone is a reason to consider upgrading to SQL Server 2005.
5. Create .NET triggers
SQL Server 2005 is .NET-integrated to a promising degree (it has distressed us for some time that Microsoft's commitment to .NET is as hedged as it is), and one useful consequence of this integration is the ability to create user-defined triggers (UDTs) through Visual Studio 2005.
The Trigger option can be pulled from the template list in Visual Studio, generating a file for the code to be triggered. The mechanism tying this code to SQL is a SqlPipe. It's deployed in your Build | Deploy. You can work it in the other direction (i.e., from CLR) by referencing the Trigger object in a T-SQL CREATE TRIGGER command.
6. SQL Server 2005 configuration is dynamic
If you're running SQL Server 2005 on Windows Server 2003, its configuration is fully dynamic -- you can change configuration values on-the-fly without restarting the server, and get immediate response (the same is true for Address Windowing Extensions).
7. Define your own data types
The user-defined type, enabled by the integration of SQL Server 2005 and the .NET CLR, is a consolidation of previous practices, allowing you to create application- or environment-specific types. You can extend more general types into variations that only except values you define -- no more triggering or constraints. Validation is built into the field.
8. Many active result sets, one connection
This is another feature not just to make note of, but to get excited about. MARS (Multiple Active Result Sets) enables you to execute multiple queries yielding multiple results, over a single connection. An application can move between open result sets as needed. The performance and scalability benefits are obvious.
This new trick is courtesy of the new ADO.NET, in tandem with SQL Server 2005's ability to accommodate multiple active commands. Since MARS is part SQL Server 2005 and part ADO.NET 2.0, it is only available if you're using both.
9. WAITFOR ... RECEIVE
In previous versions of SQL, WAITFOR was static. We fed it some wait-time value, and that was what it could do. Now WAITFOR is dynamic; tell it to wait for a RECEIVE statement's results, whenever that might be delivered.
Beyond the usual this-is-cool, we can appreciate this feature because of the manner in which it accommodates the new Service Broker (see #2). Since Service Broker makes database query ability asynchronous via queuing (and therefore extremely dynamic), and a particular database query may sit in a queue for an undetermined period, the new dynamic WAITFOR his ideal for responding to RECEIVE results that will emerge at the discretion of Service Broker.
10. DTS is now Integration Services
There's a new architecture underlying data transformation. The very popular and widely used DTS is now Integration Services, and consists of a Data Transformation Pipeline and a Data Transformation Runtime.
The pipeline connects data source to data target by means of data adapters, with transformations between them. It's a conventional structure, but implemented in such a way as to enable considerable complexity: for instance, you can do one-to-many mappings, and create columns with output derived from a transform.
The Data Transformation Runtime gives you components for organising data loading and transformation processes into production-oriented operations, within which you can manage connections and manipulate variables. It's basically a run-time object framework that can be bundled into managed .NET apps.
DTP and DTR components are used to create Integration Services packages, similar in principle to the familiar DTS packages but with much greater levels of configurability and control, particularly in the area of workflow.
Showing posts with label new features. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new features. Show all posts
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
New features of Microsoft SQL Server 2008
•Transparent Data Encryption
Enable encryption of an entire database, data files, or log files, without the need for application changes. Benefits of this include: Search encrypted data using both range and fuzzy searches, search secure data from unauthorized users, and data encryption without any required changes in existing applications.
•Extensible Key Management
SQL Server 2005 provides a comprehensive solution for encryption and key management. SQL Server 2008 delivers an excellent solution to this growing need by supporting third-party key management and HSM products.
•Auditing
Create and manage auditing via DDL, while simplifying compliance by providing more comprehensive data auditing. This enables organizations to answer common questions, such as, "What data was retrieved?"
•Enhanced Database Mirroring
SQL Server 2008 builds on SQL Server 2005 by providing a more reliable platform that has enhanced database mirroring, including automatic page repair, improved performance, and enhanced supportability.
•Automatic Recovery of Data Pages
SQL Server 2008 enables the principal and mirror machines to transparently recover from 823/824 types of data page errors by requesting a fresh copy of the suspect page from the mirroring partner transparently to end users and applications.
•Log Stream Compression
Database mirroring requires data transmissions between the participants of the mirroring implementations. With SQL Server 2008, compression of the outgoing log stream between the participants delivers optimal performance and minimizes the network bandwidth used by database mirroring.
•Resource Governor
Provide a consistent and predictable response to end users with the introduction of Resource Governor, allowing organizations to define resource limits and priorities for different workloads, which enable concurrent workloads to provide consistent performance to their end users.
•Predictable Query Performance
Enable greater query performance stability and predictability by providing functionality to lock down query plans, enabling organizations to promote stable query plans across hardware server replacements, server upgrades, and production deployments.
•Data Compression
Enable data to be stored more effectively, and reduce the storage requirements for your data. Data compression also provides significant performance improvements for large I/O bound workloads, like data warehousing.
•Hot Add CPU
Dynamically scale a database on demand by allowing CPU resources to be added to SQL Server 2008 on supported hardware platforms without forcing any downtime on applications. Note that SQL Server already supports the ability to add memory resources online.
•Policy-Based Management
Policy-Based Management is a policy-based system for managing one or more instances of SQL Server 2008. Use this with SQL Server Management Studio to create policies that manage entities on the server, such as the instance of SQL Server, databases, and other SQL Server objects.
•Streamlined Installation
SQL Server 2008 introduces significant improvements to the service life cycle for SQL Server through the re-engineering of the installation, setup, and configuration architecture. These improvements separate the installation of the physical bits on the hardware from the configuration of the SQL Server software, enabling organizations and software partners to provide recommended installation configurations.
•Performance Data Collection
Performance tuning and troubleshooting are time-consuming tasks for the administrator. To provide actionable performance insights to administrators, SQL Server 2008 includes more extensive performance data collection, a new centralized data repository for storing performance data, and new tools for reporting and monitoring.
•Language Integrated Query (LINQ)
Enable developers to issue queries against data, using a managed programming language, such as C# or VB.NET, instead of SQL statements. Enable seamless, strongly typed, set-oriented queries written in .NET languages to run against ADO.NET (LINQ to SQL), ADO.NET DataSets (LINQ to DataSets), the ADO.NET Entity Framework (LINQ to Entities), and to the Entity Data Service Mapping provider. Use the new LINQ to SQL provider that enables developers to use LINQ directly on SQL Server 2008 tables and columns.
•ADO.NET Data Services
The Object Services layer of ADO.NET enables the materialization, change tracking, and persistence of data as CLR objects. Developers using the ADO.NET framework can program against a database, using CLR objects that are managed by ADO.NET. SQL Server 2008 introduces more efficient, optimized support that improves performance and simplifies development.
•DATE/TIME
SQL Server 2008 introduces new date and time data types:
o DATE—A date-only type
o TIME—A time-only type
o DATETIMEOFFSET—A time-zone-aware datetime type
o DATETIME2—A datetime type with larger fractional seconds and year range than the existing DATETIME type
The new data types enable applications to have separate data and time types while providing large data ranges or user defined precision for time values.
•HIERARCHY ID
Enable database applications to model tree structures in a more efficient way than currently possible. New system type HierarchyId can store values that represent nodes in a hierarchy tree. This new type will be implemented as a CLR UDT, and will expose several efficient and useful built-in methods for creating and operating on hierarchy nodes with a flexible programming model.
•FILESTREAM Data
Allow large binary data to be stored directly in an NTFS file system, while preserving an integral part of the database and maintaining transactional consistency. Enable the scale-out of large binary data traditionally managed by the database to be stored outside the database on more cost-effective storage without compromise.
•Integrated Full Text Search
Integrated Full Text Search makes the transition between Text Search and relational data seamless, while enabling users to use the Text Indexes to perform high-speed text searches on large text columns.
•Sparse Columns
NULL data consumes no physical space, providing a highly efficient way of managing empty data in a database. For example, Sparse Columns allows object models that typically have numerous null values to be stored in a SQL Server 2005 database without experiencing large space costs.
•Large User-Defined Types
SQL Server 2008 eliminates the 8-KB limit for User-Defined Types (UDTs), allowing users to dramatically expand the size of their UDTs.
•Spatial Data Types
Build spatial capabilities into your applications by using the support for spatial data.
o Implement Round Earth solutions with the geography data type. Use latitude and longitude coordinates to define areas on the Earth's surface.
o Implement Flat Earth solutions with the geometry data type. Store polygons, points, and lines that are associated with projected planar surfaces and naturally planar data, such as interior spaces.
•Backup Compression
Keeping disk-based backups online is expensive and time-consuming. With SQL Server 2008 backup compression, less storage is required to keep backups online, and backups run significantly faster since less disk I/O is required.
•Partitioned Table Parallelism
Partitions enable organizations to manage large growing tables more effectively by transparently breaking them into manageable blocks of data. SQL Server 2008 builds on the advances of partitioning in SQL Server 2005 by improving the performance on large partitioned tables.
•Star Join Query Optimizations
SQL Server 2008 provides improved query performance for common data warehouse scenarios. Star Join Query optimizations reduce query response time by recognizing data warehouse join patterns.
•Grouping Sets
Grouping Sets is an extension to the GROUP BY clause that lets users define multiple groupings in the same query. Grouping Sets produces a single result set that is equivalent to a UNION ALL of differently grouped rows, making aggregation querying and reporting easier and faster.
•Change Data Capture
With Change Data Capture, changes are captured and placed in change tables. It captures complete content of changes, maintains cross-table consistency, and even works across schema changes. This enables organizations to integrate the latest information into the data warehouse.
•MERGE SQL Statement
With the introduction of the MERGE SQL Statement, developers can more effectively handle common data warehousing scenarios, like checking whether a row exists, and then executing an insert or update.
•SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) Pipeline Improvements
Data Integration packages can now scale more effectively, making use of available resources and managing the largest enterprise-scale workloads. The new design improves the scalability of runtime into multiple processors.
•SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) Persistent Lookups
The need to perform lookups is one of the most common ETL operations. This is especially prevalent in data warehousing, where fact records need to use lookups to transform business keys to their corresponding surrogates. SSIS increases the performance of lookups to support the largest tables.
•Analysis Scale and Performance
SQL Server 2008 drives broader analysis with enhanced analytical capabilities and with more complex computations and aggregations. New cube design tools help users streamline the development of the analysis infrastructure enabling them to build solutions for optimized performance.
•Block Computations
Block Computations provides a significant improvement in processing performance enabling users to increase the depth of their hierarchies and complexity of the computations.
•Writeback
New MOLAP enabled writeback capabilities in SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services removes the need to query ROLAP partitions. This provides users with enhanced writeback scenarios from within analytical applications without sacrificing the traditional OLAP performance.
•Enterprise Reporting Engine
Reports can easily be delivered throughout the organization, both internally and externally, with simplified deployment and configuration. This enables users to easily create and share reports of any size and complexity.
•Internet Report Deployment
Customers and suppliers can effortlessly be reached by deploying reports over the Internet.
•Manage Reporting Infrastructure
Increase supportability and the ability to control server behaviour with memory management, infrastructure consolidation, and easier configuration through a centralized store and API for all configuration settings.
•Report Builder Enhancements
Easily build ad-hoc and author reports with any structure through Report Designer.
•Forms Authentication Support
Support for Forms authentication enables users to choose between Windows and Forms authentication.
•Report Server Application Embedding
Report Server application embedding enables the URLs in reports and subscriptions to point back to front-end applications.
•Microsoft Office Integration
SQL Server 2008 provides new Word rendering that enables users to consume reports directly from within Microsoft Office Word. In addition, the existing Excel renderer has been greatly enhanced to accommodate the support of features, like nested data regions, sub-reports, as well as merged cell improvements. This lets users maintain layout fidelity and improves the overall consumption of reports from Microsoft Office applications.
•Predictive Analysis
SQL Server Analysis Services continues to deliver advanced data mining technologies. Better Time Series support extends forecasting capabilities. Enhanced Mining Structures deliver more flexibility to perform focused analysis through filtering as well as to deliver complete information in reports beyond the scope of the mining model. New cross-validation enables confirmation of both accuracy and stability for results that you can trust. Furthermore, the new features delivered with SQL Server 2008 Data Mining Add-ins for Office 2007 empower every user in the organization with even more actionable insight at the desktop.
Enable encryption of an entire database, data files, or log files, without the need for application changes. Benefits of this include: Search encrypted data using both range and fuzzy searches, search secure data from unauthorized users, and data encryption without any required changes in existing applications.
•Extensible Key Management
SQL Server 2005 provides a comprehensive solution for encryption and key management. SQL Server 2008 delivers an excellent solution to this growing need by supporting third-party key management and HSM products.
•Auditing
Create and manage auditing via DDL, while simplifying compliance by providing more comprehensive data auditing. This enables organizations to answer common questions, such as, "What data was retrieved?"
•Enhanced Database Mirroring
SQL Server 2008 builds on SQL Server 2005 by providing a more reliable platform that has enhanced database mirroring, including automatic page repair, improved performance, and enhanced supportability.
•Automatic Recovery of Data Pages
SQL Server 2008 enables the principal and mirror machines to transparently recover from 823/824 types of data page errors by requesting a fresh copy of the suspect page from the mirroring partner transparently to end users and applications.
•Log Stream Compression
Database mirroring requires data transmissions between the participants of the mirroring implementations. With SQL Server 2008, compression of the outgoing log stream between the participants delivers optimal performance and minimizes the network bandwidth used by database mirroring.
•Resource Governor
Provide a consistent and predictable response to end users with the introduction of Resource Governor, allowing organizations to define resource limits and priorities for different workloads, which enable concurrent workloads to provide consistent performance to their end users.
•Predictable Query Performance
Enable greater query performance stability and predictability by providing functionality to lock down query plans, enabling organizations to promote stable query plans across hardware server replacements, server upgrades, and production deployments.
•Data Compression
Enable data to be stored more effectively, and reduce the storage requirements for your data. Data compression also provides significant performance improvements for large I/O bound workloads, like data warehousing.
•Hot Add CPU
Dynamically scale a database on demand by allowing CPU resources to be added to SQL Server 2008 on supported hardware platforms without forcing any downtime on applications. Note that SQL Server already supports the ability to add memory resources online.
•Policy-Based Management
Policy-Based Management is a policy-based system for managing one or more instances of SQL Server 2008. Use this with SQL Server Management Studio to create policies that manage entities on the server, such as the instance of SQL Server, databases, and other SQL Server objects.
•Streamlined Installation
SQL Server 2008 introduces significant improvements to the service life cycle for SQL Server through the re-engineering of the installation, setup, and configuration architecture. These improvements separate the installation of the physical bits on the hardware from the configuration of the SQL Server software, enabling organizations and software partners to provide recommended installation configurations.
•Performance Data Collection
Performance tuning and troubleshooting are time-consuming tasks for the administrator. To provide actionable performance insights to administrators, SQL Server 2008 includes more extensive performance data collection, a new centralized data repository for storing performance data, and new tools for reporting and monitoring.
•Language Integrated Query (LINQ)
Enable developers to issue queries against data, using a managed programming language, such as C# or VB.NET, instead of SQL statements. Enable seamless, strongly typed, set-oriented queries written in .NET languages to run against ADO.NET (LINQ to SQL), ADO.NET DataSets (LINQ to DataSets), the ADO.NET Entity Framework (LINQ to Entities), and to the Entity Data Service Mapping provider. Use the new LINQ to SQL provider that enables developers to use LINQ directly on SQL Server 2008 tables and columns.
•ADO.NET Data Services
The Object Services layer of ADO.NET enables the materialization, change tracking, and persistence of data as CLR objects. Developers using the ADO.NET framework can program against a database, using CLR objects that are managed by ADO.NET. SQL Server 2008 introduces more efficient, optimized support that improves performance and simplifies development.
•DATE/TIME
SQL Server 2008 introduces new date and time data types:
o DATE—A date-only type
o TIME—A time-only type
o DATETIMEOFFSET—A time-zone-aware datetime type
o DATETIME2—A datetime type with larger fractional seconds and year range than the existing DATETIME type
The new data types enable applications to have separate data and time types while providing large data ranges or user defined precision for time values.
•HIERARCHY ID
Enable database applications to model tree structures in a more efficient way than currently possible. New system type HierarchyId can store values that represent nodes in a hierarchy tree. This new type will be implemented as a CLR UDT, and will expose several efficient and useful built-in methods for creating and operating on hierarchy nodes with a flexible programming model.
•FILESTREAM Data
Allow large binary data to be stored directly in an NTFS file system, while preserving an integral part of the database and maintaining transactional consistency. Enable the scale-out of large binary data traditionally managed by the database to be stored outside the database on more cost-effective storage without compromise.
•Integrated Full Text Search
Integrated Full Text Search makes the transition between Text Search and relational data seamless, while enabling users to use the Text Indexes to perform high-speed text searches on large text columns.
•Sparse Columns
NULL data consumes no physical space, providing a highly efficient way of managing empty data in a database. For example, Sparse Columns allows object models that typically have numerous null values to be stored in a SQL Server 2005 database without experiencing large space costs.
•Large User-Defined Types
SQL Server 2008 eliminates the 8-KB limit for User-Defined Types (UDTs), allowing users to dramatically expand the size of their UDTs.
•Spatial Data Types
Build spatial capabilities into your applications by using the support for spatial data.
o Implement Round Earth solutions with the geography data type. Use latitude and longitude coordinates to define areas on the Earth's surface.
o Implement Flat Earth solutions with the geometry data type. Store polygons, points, and lines that are associated with projected planar surfaces and naturally planar data, such as interior spaces.
•Backup Compression
Keeping disk-based backups online is expensive and time-consuming. With SQL Server 2008 backup compression, less storage is required to keep backups online, and backups run significantly faster since less disk I/O is required.
•Partitioned Table Parallelism
Partitions enable organizations to manage large growing tables more effectively by transparently breaking them into manageable blocks of data. SQL Server 2008 builds on the advances of partitioning in SQL Server 2005 by improving the performance on large partitioned tables.
•Star Join Query Optimizations
SQL Server 2008 provides improved query performance for common data warehouse scenarios. Star Join Query optimizations reduce query response time by recognizing data warehouse join patterns.
•Grouping Sets
Grouping Sets is an extension to the GROUP BY clause that lets users define multiple groupings in the same query. Grouping Sets produces a single result set that is equivalent to a UNION ALL of differently grouped rows, making aggregation querying and reporting easier and faster.
•Change Data Capture
With Change Data Capture, changes are captured and placed in change tables. It captures complete content of changes, maintains cross-table consistency, and even works across schema changes. This enables organizations to integrate the latest information into the data warehouse.
•MERGE SQL Statement
With the introduction of the MERGE SQL Statement, developers can more effectively handle common data warehousing scenarios, like checking whether a row exists, and then executing an insert or update.
•SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) Pipeline Improvements
Data Integration packages can now scale more effectively, making use of available resources and managing the largest enterprise-scale workloads. The new design improves the scalability of runtime into multiple processors.
•SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) Persistent Lookups
The need to perform lookups is one of the most common ETL operations. This is especially prevalent in data warehousing, where fact records need to use lookups to transform business keys to their corresponding surrogates. SSIS increases the performance of lookups to support the largest tables.
•Analysis Scale and Performance
SQL Server 2008 drives broader analysis with enhanced analytical capabilities and with more complex computations and aggregations. New cube design tools help users streamline the development of the analysis infrastructure enabling them to build solutions for optimized performance.
•Block Computations
Block Computations provides a significant improvement in processing performance enabling users to increase the depth of their hierarchies and complexity of the computations.
•Writeback
New MOLAP enabled writeback capabilities in SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services removes the need to query ROLAP partitions. This provides users with enhanced writeback scenarios from within analytical applications without sacrificing the traditional OLAP performance.
•Enterprise Reporting Engine
Reports can easily be delivered throughout the organization, both internally and externally, with simplified deployment and configuration. This enables users to easily create and share reports of any size and complexity.
•Internet Report Deployment
Customers and suppliers can effortlessly be reached by deploying reports over the Internet.
•Manage Reporting Infrastructure
Increase supportability and the ability to control server behaviour with memory management, infrastructure consolidation, and easier configuration through a centralized store and API for all configuration settings.
•Report Builder Enhancements
Easily build ad-hoc and author reports with any structure through Report Designer.
•Forms Authentication Support
Support for Forms authentication enables users to choose between Windows and Forms authentication.
•Report Server Application Embedding
Report Server application embedding enables the URLs in reports and subscriptions to point back to front-end applications.
•Microsoft Office Integration
SQL Server 2008 provides new Word rendering that enables users to consume reports directly from within Microsoft Office Word. In addition, the existing Excel renderer has been greatly enhanced to accommodate the support of features, like nested data regions, sub-reports, as well as merged cell improvements. This lets users maintain layout fidelity and improves the overall consumption of reports from Microsoft Office applications.
•Predictive Analysis
SQL Server Analysis Services continues to deliver advanced data mining technologies. Better Time Series support extends forecasting capabilities. Enhanced Mining Structures deliver more flexibility to perform focused analysis through filtering as well as to deliver complete information in reports beyond the scope of the mining model. New cross-validation enables confirmation of both accuracy and stability for results that you can trust. Furthermore, the new features delivered with SQL Server 2008 Data Mining Add-ins for Office 2007 empower every user in the organization with even more actionable insight at the desktop.
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