In 1987, Sybase released the SQL Server database management system on the UNIX platform. The product was ported to IBM OS/2 by Microsoft, Sybase, and Ashton-Tate (of DBase fame) in 1988-89. Ashton-Tate dropped out of the consortium in 1990. Between 1991 and 1993, Microsoft and IBM divorced in the OS/2 arena, and SQL Server 4.2 for Windows NT and the Windows NT 3.1 operating system were released.
In 1994, Microsoft and Sybase ended their co-development efforts (for a period in the early 1990's, SQL Server 4.x for OS/2 was actually labeled Microsoft on the manuals and Sybase on the diskettes.) Microsoft carried forward on Windows NT, and Sybase carried forward on UNIX. Microsoft SQL Server version 6.0 was released in 1995, version 6.5 in 1996, and version 7 in 1998. The rest is basically history, the fate of IBM OS/2 and Sybase's database compared to Microsoft's offerings is well known.
Microsoft has developed a number of versions of the successor to SQL 7.0, known as SQL Server 2000, including the Enterprise Edition, which includes distributed partitioned views and failover clustering to improve database uptime; Standard Edition, which should be appropriate for small to mid-sized businesses; Personal Edition, which will run on non-server platforms including Windows 98; Developer Edition, which includes a development and test end-user license precluding production deployment; and a Windows CE Edition, which will not be available until the second half of 2000.
The product has historically been used at the departmental data mart level. Microsoft is now trying to penetrate the Enterprise Data Warehouse market. Their largest competitors are IBM's DB2 Universal Database and Oracle's 8i. The database market is growing at approximately 20% per year, and since Microsoft will continue to thrive with mid to low-end customers, they should profit greatly in these markets.
In addition, Microsoft has announced that they are running 20 critical internal systems, including their worldwide sales data warehouse, on SQL Server 2000. In the vendor world, this is referred to as "eating your own dog food", and their commitment to the product is clear.
The product is based on Microsoft's Windows DNA (Distributed Internet Architecture), and includes many interesting components, some of which are also present in SQL Server 7.0 and many of which have been enhanced:
Web Related
Internet Information Services 5.0 (IIS): Web services integrated with the operating system to allow web hosting.
Active Server Pages (ASP): A web server scripting language.
HTTP Connectivity: A DLL is supplied which allows users to define virtual roots in IIS that are associated with an instance of SQL Server. Security can be set to anonymous access, using SQL Server id/password (in conjunction with the secure sockets layer), or with Windows Access Control Lists (ACLs).
Work Sharing
COM+ Component Services: This feature was formerly known as the Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS). This service allows for remote object calls and many other programming language features similar to Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs).
Distributed Transaction Support: The ability for multiple computers to participate in a coordinated unit of work.
Message Oriented Middleware: MSMQ (Microsoft Message Queuing) is similar to IBM's MQSeries product, and coordinates the communications across networks and systems.
XML Support: The Microsoft XML Parser helps create applications that exchange data formatted in the Extensible Markup Language (XML). Most newly released products from data warehouse vendors support XML in some form.
ActiveX Data Objects: Software modules based on Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) architecture which make it possible to call ready-made components that blend in and appear as normal parts of the program.
Security
Security: Microsoft has enabled role-based security to simplify the programming effort.
Improved Security: Analysis Services includes security features all the way down to the cell level within a cube.
Queries/Searches
English Query: A method for issuing natural language queries in English that are turned into the appropriate SQL statements to answer the question posed. "Authoring" of English Query applications is performed in Microsoft Visual Studio version 6, which is included with SQL Server. In its prior incarnation, English Query could use only ODBC, it is now enabled with OLE DB, and can therefore access heterogeneous data sources.
Analysis Services: (Formerly OLAP Services). The capability to create On-Line Analytical Processing multi-dimensional databases (MDBs or "cubes") within SQL Server. Also provides roll-up (aggregation) capabilities. Includes support for Multidimensional, Relational, and Hybrid OLAP.
Integrated Data Mining: The ability to perform such tasks as clickstream analysis for web sites. Analysis services also provides the ability to link cubes (multiple cubes, either inside and/or outside the firewall appear in a single "view", essentially a "virtual cube") and access cubes via HTTP (web-enabled analysis). The features are part of the OLE DB for Data Mining specification (see "Microsoft Says OLE for Data Mining: Is It Bull?", March 28, 2000, for additional details). The data mining algorithms supported were developed by Microsoft and consist of Decision Trees (four different algorithms based on classification theory), and Clustering (based on the nearest neighbor method). Third party algorithms are also supported.
Full Text Search: The ability to run queries on text documents in relational tables and search across all indexed columns in a table. For Full-Text Search, documents are stored in Binary Large Objects (BLOBs) and registered for full-text indexing, including the ability to filter out "noise words" such as "a" and "the". This capability is similar to the full text indexing in Lotus Notes. Microsoft has also added the capability to update the full-text index in near real-time instead of batch mode, if desired.
Distributed Partitioned Views: The ability to share database processing across a group of servers. The data is "horizontally partitioned" across the servers, but the partitioning is transparent to the application. The servers distribute scans and updates as needed. The technology used is known as "shared-nothing clustering".
Sub Indexing: On Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) hardware, the product has the ability to multi-thread index creation. Separate processors and threads create "sub-indexes" of large databases in parallel (including parallel database scans to gather the index information), and then a "coordinating thread" combines them into a complete index. This can be extremely valuable in a very large database that is frequently updated, since it can save a great deal of time.
Materialized Views: The product allows the creation of a unique clustered index on a database view. This can result in great performance gains, and the query optimizer will even be able to use the view if it is not referenced in the query's FROM clause. This feature is important in that existing queries do not have to be re-coded to force the optimizer to use the view index.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/what-s-new-in-microsoft-sql-server-2000-15888/
In 1994, Microsoft and Sybase ended their co-development efforts (for a period in the early 1990's, SQL Server 4.x for OS/2 was actually labeled Microsoft on the manuals and Sybase on the diskettes.) Microsoft carried forward on Windows NT, and Sybase carried forward on UNIX. Microsoft SQL Server version 6.0 was released in 1995, version 6.5 in 1996, and version 7 in 1998. The rest is basically history, the fate of IBM OS/2 and Sybase's database compared to Microsoft's offerings is well known.
Microsoft has developed a number of versions of the successor to SQL 7.0, known as SQL Server 2000, including the Enterprise Edition, which includes distributed partitioned views and failover clustering to improve database uptime; Standard Edition, which should be appropriate for small to mid-sized businesses; Personal Edition, which will run on non-server platforms including Windows 98; Developer Edition, which includes a development and test end-user license precluding production deployment; and a Windows CE Edition, which will not be available until the second half of 2000.
The product has historically been used at the departmental data mart level. Microsoft is now trying to penetrate the Enterprise Data Warehouse market. Their largest competitors are IBM's DB2 Universal Database and Oracle's 8i. The database market is growing at approximately 20% per year, and since Microsoft will continue to thrive with mid to low-end customers, they should profit greatly in these markets.
In addition, Microsoft has announced that they are running 20 critical internal systems, including their worldwide sales data warehouse, on SQL Server 2000. In the vendor world, this is referred to as "eating your own dog food", and their commitment to the product is clear.
The product is based on Microsoft's Windows DNA (Distributed Internet Architecture), and includes many interesting components, some of which are also present in SQL Server 7.0 and many of which have been enhanced:
Web Related
Internet Information Services 5.0 (IIS): Web services integrated with the operating system to allow web hosting.
Active Server Pages (ASP): A web server scripting language.
HTTP Connectivity: A DLL is supplied which allows users to define virtual roots in IIS that are associated with an instance of SQL Server. Security can be set to anonymous access, using SQL Server id/password (in conjunction with the secure sockets layer), or with Windows Access Control Lists (ACLs).
Work Sharing
COM+ Component Services: This feature was formerly known as the Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS). This service allows for remote object calls and many other programming language features similar to Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs).
Distributed Transaction Support: The ability for multiple computers to participate in a coordinated unit of work.
Message Oriented Middleware: MSMQ (Microsoft Message Queuing) is similar to IBM's MQSeries product, and coordinates the communications across networks and systems.
XML Support: The Microsoft XML Parser helps create applications that exchange data formatted in the Extensible Markup Language (XML). Most newly released products from data warehouse vendors support XML in some form.
ActiveX Data Objects: Software modules based on Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) architecture which make it possible to call ready-made components that blend in and appear as normal parts of the program.
Security
Security: Microsoft has enabled role-based security to simplify the programming effort.
Improved Security: Analysis Services includes security features all the way down to the cell level within a cube.
Queries/Searches
English Query: A method for issuing natural language queries in English that are turned into the appropriate SQL statements to answer the question posed. "Authoring" of English Query applications is performed in Microsoft Visual Studio version 6, which is included with SQL Server. In its prior incarnation, English Query could use only ODBC, it is now enabled with OLE DB, and can therefore access heterogeneous data sources.
Analysis Services: (Formerly OLAP Services). The capability to create On-Line Analytical Processing multi-dimensional databases (MDBs or "cubes") within SQL Server. Also provides roll-up (aggregation) capabilities. Includes support for Multidimensional, Relational, and Hybrid OLAP.
Integrated Data Mining: The ability to perform such tasks as clickstream analysis for web sites. Analysis services also provides the ability to link cubes (multiple cubes, either inside and/or outside the firewall appear in a single "view", essentially a "virtual cube") and access cubes via HTTP (web-enabled analysis). The features are part of the OLE DB for Data Mining specification (see "Microsoft Says OLE for Data Mining: Is It Bull?", March 28, 2000, for additional details). The data mining algorithms supported were developed by Microsoft and consist of Decision Trees (four different algorithms based on classification theory), and Clustering (based on the nearest neighbor method). Third party algorithms are also supported.
Full Text Search: The ability to run queries on text documents in relational tables and search across all indexed columns in a table. For Full-Text Search, documents are stored in Binary Large Objects (BLOBs) and registered for full-text indexing, including the ability to filter out "noise words" such as "a" and "the". This capability is similar to the full text indexing in Lotus Notes. Microsoft has also added the capability to update the full-text index in near real-time instead of batch mode, if desired.
Distributed Partitioned Views: The ability to share database processing across a group of servers. The data is "horizontally partitioned" across the servers, but the partitioning is transparent to the application. The servers distribute scans and updates as needed. The technology used is known as "shared-nothing clustering".
Sub Indexing: On Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) hardware, the product has the ability to multi-thread index creation. Separate processors and threads create "sub-indexes" of large databases in parallel (including parallel database scans to gather the index information), and then a "coordinating thread" combines them into a complete index. This can be extremely valuable in a very large database that is frequently updated, since it can save a great deal of time.
Materialized Views: The product allows the creation of a unique clustered index on a database view. This can result in great performance gains, and the query optimizer will even be able to use the view if it is not referenced in the query's FROM clause. This feature is important in that existing queries do not have to be re-coded to force the optimizer to use the view index.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/what-s-new-in-microsoft-sql-server-2000-15888/
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