Microsoft SQL Server 2005

Microsoft SQL Server has become one of the most popular database engines in the world. Microsoft released the new version of the database engine late last year and it is gaining even more popularity.

The ability to transform corporate data into meaningful and actionable information is the single most important source of competitive advantage in today’s business world. The new version of SQL Server improves security, scalability, and availability of your data. As you can see from the graphic above, SQL Server 2005 includes a lot more than a relational database and management tools.

Integration Services replaces Data Transformation Services (DTS), which was first introduced as a component of SQL Server 7.0. Integration Services goes beyond DTS in its ability to clean, aggregate, merge and copy data. It also includes graphical tools and wizards for building and debugging packages: tasks for performing functions such as FTP operations, SQL statement execution, and e-mail messaging.

Analysis Services permits the combination of data from multiple SQL and non-SQL data sources into views. It provides a unified and integrated view of all your business data as the foundation for all of your traditional reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP) analysis, Key Performance Indicator (KPI) scorecards, and data mining.

Reporting Services has been changed markedly from early versions for SQL2000. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services is a server-based solution for building enterprise reports that draw content from a variety of relational and multidimensional data sources, publishing reports that can be viewed in various formats, and centrally managing security and subscriptions. The reports that you create can be viewed over a Web-based connection or as part of a Microsoft Windows application or SharePoint portal.

Notification Services is a platform for developing and deploying applications that generate and send notifications to subscribers. The notifications generated are personalized, timely messages that can be sent to a wide range of devices, and that reflect the preferences of the subscriber. A notification can be generated and sent to the subscriber as soon as a triggering event occurs or can be generated and sent on a predetermined schedule specified by the subscriber.

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.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 contains the functionality you need to issue full-text queries against plain character-based data in SQL Server tables. Full-text queries can include words and phrases, or multiple forms of a word or phrase.
Should you upgrade from SQL 2000? That is a question to ask the developer of each major application using SQL as its database engine in your company regarding performance and functionality gains. Even if the developer says that it is optional, the web based Reporting Services alone may be worth it if you have people outside your local area network that wish to view corporate data easily.