New book: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Administrator's Pocket Consultant, Second Edition

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627383.indd William Stanek does it again! William’s latest book, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Administrator’s Pocket Consultant, Second Edition, is now available. This edition has been completely updated for SQL Server 2008 R2. You can place your orders now!

Here are two excerpts from the book. Enjoy!

Introduction (excerpt)

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Administrator’s Pocket Consultant, Second Edition, is designed to be a concise and compulsively usable resource for SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 Release 2 (R2) administrators. It covers everything you need to know to perform the core administrative tasks for SQL Server and is the readable resource guide that you’ll want on your desk at all times. Because the focus is on giving you maximum value in a pocket-sized guide, you don’t have to wade through hundreds of pages of extraneous information to find what you’re looking for. Instead, you’ll find exactly what you need to get the job done.

This book is designed to be the one resource you turn to whenever you have questions about SQL Server administration. To this end, the book zeroes in on daily administration procedures, frequently used tasks, documented examples, and options that are representative while not necessarily inclusive. One of the key goals is to keep content concise enough that the book is compact and easy to navigate while also ensuring that the book contains as much information as possible. Instead of a 1,000-page tome or a 100-page quick reference, you get a valuable resource guide that can help you quickly and easily perform common tasks, solve problems, and implement advanced SQL Server technologies such as replication, distributed queries, and multiserver administration.

Who Is This Book For?

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Administrator’s Pocket Consultant, Second Edition, covers the Standard, Enterprise, Developer, Web, and Workgroup editions of SQL Server. The book is designed for:

  • Current SQL Server database administrators
  • Accomplished users who have some administrator responsibilities
  • Administrators migrating to SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 from previous versions
  • Administrators transitioning from other database architectures

To include as much information as possible, I had to assume that you have basic networking skills and a basic understanding of SQL Server. With this in mind, I don’t devote entire chapters to understanding SQL Server architecture or running simple SQL queries. But I do cover SQL Server installation, configuration, enterprise-wide server management, performance tuning, optimization, maintenance, and much more.

I also assume that you’re fairly familiar with SQL commands and stored procedures as well as the standard Windows user interface. If you need help learning SQL basics, you should read other resources (many of which are available from Microsoft Press).

Chapter 1

SQL Server 2008

Administration Overview (excerpt)

· SQL Server 2008 and Your Hardware 2

· SQL Server 2008 Editions 5

· SQL Server and Windows 8

· Using the Graphical Administration Tools 12

· Using the Command-Line Tools 16

· Using SQL Server PowerShell 21

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 was released in 2008, and SQL Server 2008 Release 2 (R2) followed in 2010. For ease of reference in this book, I refer to both SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 as SQL Server or SQL Server 2008. When I need to differentiate between the two releases, I’ll indicate that Release 1 (R1) does this but R2 does that. Sometimes, I’ll simply state the additional options or features that R2 provides.

SQL Server 2008 builds on SQL Server 2005 and finally makes Microsoft’s vision of SQL Server as an end-to-end data platform a reality. SQL Server 2008 R2 is an incremental release that includes some additional functionality and performance enhancements. By functioning as a mission-critical data platform, allowing dynamic development, providing extensive business intelligence, and going beyond relational data, SQL Server 2008 provides the bedrock foundation on which small, medium, and large organizations can build their next generation IT infrastructure. At the core of SQL Server 2008 and R2, you will find the following:

  • Database Engine Services Includes the core database, notification, replication, and full-text search components. The core database—also know as the Database Engine—is the heart of SQL Server. Replication increases data availability by distributing data across multiple databases, allowing you to scale out the read workload across designated database servers. Full-text search allows plain-language queries on data stored in SQL Server tables.
  • Analysis Services Delivers online analytical processing (OLAP) and datamining functionality for business intelligence applications. Analysis Services enables your organization to aggregate data from multiple data sources, such as relational databases, and work with this data in a wide variety of ways.
  • Integration Services Provides an enterprise data transformation and integration solution for extracting and transforming data from multiple data sources and moving it to one or more destination data sources. This functionality allows you to merge data from heterogeneous data sources, load data into data warehouses and data marts, and more.
  • Reporting Services Includes Report Manager and Report Server, which provide a complete server-based platform for creating, managing, and distributing reports. Report Server is built on standard Internet Information Services (IIS) and .NET Framework technology, allowing you to combine the benefits of SQL Server and IIS to host and process reports.
  • Service Broker Provides reliable queuing and messaging as a central part of the database. Queues can be used to stack work such as queries and other requests and perform the work as resources allow. Messaging allows database applications to communicate with each other. The Database Engine uses Service Broker to deliver notification messages. This notification functionality doesn’t require or use Notification Services, which has been removed from SQL Server 2008.
  • Sync Framework Enables data synchronization for collaboration and offline use. Developers can use Sync Framework to synchronize databases and other types of data stores as well as files, folders, and metadata.

As you get started with SQL Server 2008, you should concentrate on these areas:

  • How SQL Server 2008 works with your hardware
  • What versions and editions of SQL Server 2008 are available and how they meet your needs
  • How SQL Server 2008 works with Windows operating systems
  • What administration tools are available