As Microsoft’s bestselling database manager, SQL Server is highly flexible and customizable, and has excellent support—the 2008 version offers several significant new capabilities. This book offers accurate and expert coverage on the updates to SQL Server 2008 such as its enhanced security; the ability to encrypt an entire database, data files, and log files without the need for application changes; a scalable infrastructure that can manage reports and analysis of any size and complexity; and its extensive performance data collection.

Complete. Authoritative. Practical. The only SQL Server book you need. Mastering SQL Server 2000 is the one indispensable resource for anyone working with the latest version of SQL Server. Whether you build or administer SQL Server databases or write applications that communicate with them, you'll find the background knowledge and the practical instruction you need to accomplish any task, from the most basic to the most advanced. Coverage includes: Understanding SQL Server architecture Designing an efficient normalized database Writing Transact-SQL statements and batches Creating databases Creating tables and views Creating stored procedures and triggers Administering SQL Server Managing SQL Server security Designing applications using ADO, SQL-DMO, and SQL-NS Using Data Transformation Services Integrating SQL Server with the Internet Optimizing SQL Server performance Understanding and managing replication Using Analysis Services to analyze data Using Microsoft English Query Troubleshooting common problems

bull; Contains the most depth and breadth of coverage of any book on SQL Server architecture, internals, and tuning bull; Will be a key reference for anyone working with SQL Server, no matter what their skill level bull; The latest book in the bestselling series of Guru's Guides from Ken Henderson

Over 80 recipes to help you tune SQL Server 2012 and achieve optimal performance.

In his new book, Brad's Sure Guide to SQL Server Maintenance Plans, Brad McGehee takes you on a comprehensive tour of two SQL Server tools designed to help DBAs ensure that a "required minimum" level of maintenance takes place on their SQL Server instances: the Maintenance Plan Wizard and the Maintenance Plan Designer. Table of Contents * Chapter 01: Why is Database Maintenance Important? Chapter 02: Before you Create any Maintenance Plans Chapter 03: Getting Started with the Maintenance Plan Wizard Chapter 04: Task Scheduling Chapter 05: Check database Integrity Task Chapter 06: Shrink Database Task Chapter 07: Rebuild Index Task Chapter 08: Reorganize Index Task Chapter 09: Update Statistics Task Chapter 10: Execute SQL Server Agent Job Task Chapter 11: History Cleanup Task Chapter 12: Define Back Up Database (Full) Task Chapter 13: Define Back Up Database (Differential) Task Chapter 14: Back Up Database (Transaction Log) Task Chapter 15: Maintenance Cleanup Task Chapter 16: Using the Maintenance Plan Designer Why read this book? Millions of SQL Server instances run in the offices of small and medium-sized organizations and there are many "accidental" DBAs out there whose job it is to maintain them. Often, they find that they don't have the knowledge, experience, or critically the time, to perform the correct level of maintenance on their SQL Server databases, much as they might like to. This can mean poor performance and reduced availability. Regardless of the size of your organization, if your mission critical data becomes unavailable, then business will suffer greatly. The Maintenance Plan Wizard and Designer allow you to configure and schedule eleven core database maintenance tasks, ranging from integrity checks, to database backups, to index reorganizations and rebuilds. Brad walks through every one of these tasks covering: * The intent of each task and why it's important * How to configure each task and what all the options mean * Scheduling considerations: when and how often should you run the task? * Customizing and extended your Maintenance Plans using the Designer Used carefully, these Maintenance Plan tools represent powerful time-saving devices for any DBA. At each stage of the book, Brad explains clearly the correct and incorrect uses for the tool, and indicates where more advanced solutions, using T-SQL or PowerShell scripting, would be more appropriate.

Your hands-on, step-by-step guide to building applications with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Teach yourself the programming fundamentals of SQL Server 2012—one step at a time. Ideal for beginning SQL Server database administrators and developers, this tutorial provides clear guidance and practical, learn-by-doing exercises for building database solutions that solve real-world business problems. Discover how to: Install and work with core components and tools Create tables and index structures Manipulate and retrieve data Secure, manage, back up, and recover databases Apply techniques for building high-performing applications Use clustering, database mirroring, and log shipping

Every day, out in the various online forums devoted to SQL Server, and on Twitter, the same types of questions come up repeatedly: Why is this query running slowly? Why is SQL Server ignoring my index? Why does this query run quickly sometimes and slowly at others? My response is the same in each case: have you looked at the execution plan? An execution plan describes what's going on behind the scenes when SQL Server executes a query. It shows how the query optimizer joined the data from the various tables defined in the query, which indexes it used, if any, how it performed any aggregations or sorting, and much more. It also estimates the cost of all of these operations, in terms of the relative load placed on the system. Every Database Administrator, developer, report writer, and anyone else who writes T-SQL to access SQL Server data, must understand how to read and interpret execution plans.My book leads you right from the basics of capturing plans, through how to interrupt them in their various forms, graphical or XML, and then how to use the information you find there to diagnose the most common causes of poor query performance, and so optimize your SQL queries, and improve your indexing strategy.

The industry’s most complete, useful, and up-to-date guide to SQL Server 2014. You’ll find start-to-finish coverage of SQL Server’s core database server and management capabilities: all the real-world information, tips, guidelines, and examples you’ll need to install, monitor, maintain, and optimize the most complex database environments. The provided examples and sample code provide plenty of hands-on opportunities to learn more about SQL Server and create your own viable solutions. Four leading SQL Server experts present deep practical insights for administering SQL Server, analyzing and optimizing queries, implementing data warehouses, ensuring high availability, tuning performance, and much more. You will benefit from their behind-the-scenes look into SQL Server, showing what goes on behind the various wizards and GUI-based tools. You’ll learn how to use the underlying SQL commands to fully unlock the power and capabilities of SQL Server. Writing for all intermediate-to-advanced-level SQL Server professionals, the authors draw on immense production experience with SQL Server. Throughout, they focus on successfully applying SQL Server 2014’s most powerful capabilities and its newest tools and features. Detailed information on how to... Understand SQL Server 2014’s new features and each edition’s capabilities and licensing Install, upgrade to, and configure SQL Server 2014 for better performance and easier management Streamline and automate key administration tasks with Smart Admin Leverage powerful new backup/restore options: flexible backup to URL, Managed Backup to Windows Azure, and encrypted backups Strengthen security with new features for enforcing “least privilege” Improve performance with updateable columnstore indexes, Delayed Durability, and other enhancements Execute queries and business logic more efficiently with memoryoptimized tables, buffer pool extension, and natively-compiled stored procedures Control workloads and Disk I/O with the Resource Governor Deploy AlwaysOn Availability Groups and Failover Cluster Instances to achieve enterprise-class availability and disaster recovery Apply new Business Intelligence improvements in Master Data Services, data quality, and Parallel Data Warehouse

Taking readers far beyond official Microsoft documentation, the co-authors explore topics that range from how to securely install Reporting Services through virtually every facet of creating and deploying reports. In the accompanying DVD, video demonstrations show how to navigate through difficult and confusing parts of the technology.