Flexible, user-friendly and cost-effective – these are three basic characteristics of Microsoft SQL Server, which have made it one of the most popular RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) in the web design and development fraternity. Microsoft SQL Server provides robust reliability, security and scalability to enterprise-wide business solutions. Microsoft SQL Server uses a format named “Tabular Data Stream (TDS)” to invoke all operations. TDS is an application layer protocol used to exchange data between the server and the clients. Data is stored in a database comprising of tables with typed columns. Microsoft SQL Server supports various data types including Char, Varchar, Text, Blobs etc. The database is divided into sequentially numbered pages for storage allocation.
Rows of a table are divided into a series of partitions for physical storage. SQL Server uses transactions to ensure that the database is never left in an intermediate state once logged in. The transactions group a series of actions, ensuring that either none of the actions or all will succeed. This further ensures data integrity, which may be challenged in the course of development of website with database-linkage. The main query languages of SQL Server are ANSI SQL and T-SQL. It supports the use of a query plan that helps to retrieve precise data in the shortest possible time. SQL Server uses a cost-based query optimizer that optimizes the system in terms of the resources it may take to execute the query.
The optimizer analyzes the system resources and automatically sets the query plan for accessing tables. Stored procedures can also be defined in SQL Server. The add-on services provided by SQL Server are also very useful for any web designing development process. These are: Service Broker – This is a part of the database engine that provides an asynchronous programming environment. Replication Services – These are used by SQL Server to replicate and synchronize database objects. Analysis Services - Analysis Services integrates data mining and OLAP capabilities for SQL Server databases. Reporting Services – Provide the interface to generate reports from the stored or queried data.
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