SQL Server

MS SQLServer Features

The Database Engine is the core service for storing, processing, and securing data. The Database Engine provides controlled access and rapid transaction processing to meet the requirements of the most demanding data consuming applications within your enterprise.

Use the Database Engine to create relational databases for online transaction processing or online analytical processing data. This includes creating tables for storing data, and database objects such as indexes, views, and stored procedures for viewing, managing, and securing data. You can use SQL Server Management Studio to manage the database objects, and SQL Server Profiler for capturing server events.

To learn more about the Database Engine, see SQL Server Database Engine and SQL Server Tools Tutorials.

To quickly get to important high-level topics for the Database Engine, go to Database Engine Documentation Map.

Analysis Services

Analysis Services is the core service for supporting rapid analysis of business data, delivering online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining functionality in business intelligence applications.

OLAP

Analysis Services allows you to design, create, and manage multidimensional structures that contain detail and aggregated data from multiple data sources, such as relational databases, in a single unified logical model supported by built-in calculations. Analysis Services provides fast, intuitive, top-down analysis of large quantities of data built on this unified data model, which can be delivered to users in multiple languages and currencies. Analysis Services works with data warehouses, data marts, production databases and operational data stores, supporting analysis of both historical and real time data.

To learn more about OLAP, see SQL Server Analysis Services and Analysis Services Tutorials.

To quickly get to important high-level topics for OLAP, go to Analysis Services Documentation Map.

Data Mining

Analysis Services contains the features and tools you need to create complex data mining solutions.

A set of industry-standard data mining algorithms.

The Data Mining Designer, which you can use to create, manage, explore, and create predictions from mining models.

The DMX language, which you can use to manage mining models and to create complex prediction queries.

You can use a combination of these features and tools to discover trends and patterns that exist in your data, and then use the trends and patterns to make intelligent decisions about difficult business problems.

To learn more about data mining, see SQL Server Analysis Services and Data Mining Tutorials.

To quickly get to important high-level topics for data mining, go to Analysis Services Documentation Map.

Integration Services

SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (SSIS) is the extract, transform, and load (ETL) component of SQL Server 2005. It replaces the earlier SQL Server ETL component, Data Transformation Services (DTS).

Integration Services is a platform for building enterprise-level data integration and data transformations solutions. You use Integration Services to solve complex business problems by copying or downloading files, sending e-mail messages in response to events, updating data warehouses, cleaning and mining data, and managing SQL Server objects and data. The packages can work alone or in concert with other packages to address complex business needs. Integration Services can extract and transform data from a wide variety of sources such as XML data files, flat files, and relational data sources, and then load the data into one or more destinations.

Integration Services includes a rich set of built-in tasks and transformations; tools for constructing packages; and the Integration Services service for running and managing packages. You can use the graphical Integration Services tools to create solutions without writing a single line of code; or you can program the extensive Integration Services object model to create packages programmatically and code custom tasks and other package objects.

To learn more about Integration Services, see SQL Server Integration Services and Integration Services Tutorials.

To quickly get to important high-level topics for Integration Services, go to Integration Services Documentation Map.

Replication

Replication is a set of technologies for copying and distributing data and database objects from one database to another, and then synchronizing between databases to maintain consistency. Using replication, you can distribute data to different locations and to remote or mobile users over local and wide area networks, dial-up connections, wireless connections, and the Internet. SQL Server provides three types of replication, each with different capabilities: transactional replication, merge replication, and snapshot replication.

Transactional replication is typically used in server-to-server scenarios that require high throughput, including: improving scalability and availability; data warehousing and reporting; integrating data from multiple sites; integrating heterogeneous data; and offloading batch processing. Merge replication is primarily designed for mobile applications or distributed server applications that have possible data conflicts. Common scenarios include: exchanging data with mobile users; consumer point of sale (POS) applications; and integration of data from multiple sites. Snapshot replication is used to provide the initial data set for transactional and merge replication; it can also be used when complete refreshes of data are appropriate. With these three types of replication, SQL Server provides a powerful and flexible system for synchronizing data across your enterprise.

To learn more about replication, see SQL Server Replication.

To quickly get to important high-level topics for replication, go to Replication Documentation Map.

Reporting Services

SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services (SSRS) is a server-based reporting platform that provides comprehensive data reporting from relational and multidimensional data sources. Reporting Services includes processing components, a complete set of tools that you can use to create and manage reports, and an application programming interface (API) that allows developers to integrate or extend data and report processing in custom applications. The reports that you build can be based on relational or multidimensional data from SQL Server, Analysis Services, Oracle, or any Microsoft .NET Framework data provider, such as ODBC or OLE DB.

With Reporting Services, you can create interactive, tabular, or free-form reports that retrieve data at scheduled intervals or on-demand when the user opens a report. Reporting Services also enables users to create ad hoc reports based on predefined models, and to interactively explore data within the model. All reports can be rendered in both desktop and Web-oriented formats. You can choose from a variety of viewing formats to render reports on demand in preferred formats for data manipulation or printing.

Reporting Services is a server-based solution, and thus provides a way to centralize report storage and management, provide secure access to reports, models, and folders, control how reports are processed and distributed, and standardize how reports are used in your business.

To learn more about Reporting Services, see SQL Server Reporting Services and Reporting Services Tutorials.

To quickly get to important high-level topics for Reporting Services, go to Reporting Services Documentation Map.

Notification Services