Managing Unstructured Data with SQL Server 2008
The proliferation of digital content has significant implications for the way in which organizations store and access business data. Increasingly, databases that are at the core of business applications must be integrated with unstructured data in the form of documents, images, video content, and other multimedia formats. Organizations increasingly need to be able to store and manage digital data of all formats in order to manage the information lifecycle, meet compliance requirements, and implement content management solutions
What's New for XML in SQL Server 2008
Microsoft introduced XML-related capabilities in Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with the FOR XML and OPENXML Transact-SQL keywords, which enabled developers to write Transact-SQL code to retrieve a query result as a stream of XML, and to shred an XML document into a rowset. SQL Server 2005 extended these XML capabilities significantly with the introduction of a native xml data type that supports XSD schema validation, XQuery-based operations, and XML indexing. SQL Server 2008 builds on the XML capabilities of previous releases and provides enhancements to meet the challenges that customers have faced when storing and manipulating XML data in the database
Reporting Services in SQL Server 2008
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services provides a complete server-based platform that is designed to support a wide variety of reporting needs including managed enterprise reporting, ad-hoc reporting, embedded reporting, and web based reporting to enable organizations to deliver relevant information where needed across the entire enterprise. Reporting Services 2008 provides the tools and features necessary to author a variety of richly formatted reports from a wide range of data sources and provides a comprehensive set of familiar tools used to manage and secure an enterprise reporting solution. Reports are processed and delivered quickly and effectively, enabling users to either receive reports automatically through subscriptions, to access reports from a central report repository on an ad-hoc basis, or to consume reports in context of their business processes through reports directly embedded into their business or web applications
Delivering Location Intelligence with Spatial Data
The growing ability of businesses and consumers to quickly absorb large volumes of data, together with the increased availability of digital maps and spatially-enabled applications has created an unprecedented opportunity to incorporate geographic factors into decision making processes and analysis. The new spatial support in Microsoft SQL Server™ 2008 can help you to make better decisions through visual analysis of location data that can be stored and manipulated in a SQL Server database.
SQL Server 2008 Manageability
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 builds on the management capabilities of previous versions and provides a variety of tools and frameworks to help you manage your enterprise data environment. The comprehensive management automation capabilities of SQL Server 2008 reduce the administrative overhead that is required to maintain data services and ensure compliance with change management policies. A new end-to-end performance monitoring and analysis suite helps you to optimize the responsiveness and scalability of your SQL Server services across the enterprise, and the scalable management interfaces and tools help you to reduce server management effort and focus on higher value activities.
SQL Server 2008 Performance and Scale
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 incorporates the tools and technologies that are necessary to implement relational databases, reporting systems, and data warehouses of enterprise scale, and provides optimal performance and responsiveness. With SQL Server 2008, you can take advantage of the latest hardware technologies while scaling up your servers to support server consolidation. SQL Server 2008 also enables you to scale out your largest data solutions
Server Consolidation with SQL Server 2008
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 supports multiple options for server consolidation, which provides organizations with the flexibility to choose the consolidation approach that best meets their requirements to centralize data services management and reduce hardware and maintenance costs.
Online Transaction Processing in SQL Server 2008
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 provides a database platform that is optimized for today’s applications, and that can scale for any size of business. It drives cost-efficiencies by dramatically reducing downtime and enabling dynamic and proactive management that significantly reduces administrative overhead.
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft Data Platform Development
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and the Microsoft data platform provide developers with a comprehensive programming framework in which to create data centric solutions that target mobile devices, desktops, Web servers, and enterprise servers.
Business Intelligence in SQL Server 2008
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 makes business intelligence (BI) available to everyone through deep integration with Microsoft Office, providing the right tool, to the right user, at the right price.