As a database serverit is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications —which may run either on the same computer or on another computer across a network including the Internet. Microsoft markets at least a dozen different editions of Microsoft SQL Server, aimed at different audiences and for workloads ranging from small single-machine applications to large Internet-facing applications with many concurrent users.

Its name is entirely microsoft sql server 2008 enterprise evaluation edition free, it being server software that responds to queries in the SQL language. As of July [update]the following versions are supported by Microsoft:.

From SQL Server onward, the product is supported on x64 processors only and must have 1. The RTM version is Microsoft makes Snterprise Server available in multiple editions, with different feature sets and targeting different users. These editions are: [8] [9].

The protocol layer implements the external interface to SQL Server. TDS is an application layer protocol, used to transfer data between a database server srver a client. Initially designed and developed by Sybase Inc. Consequently, access to SQL Server is available over these protocols. Data storage is a databasewhich is a collection of tables with typed columns.

SQL Server supports microsoft sql server 2008 enterprise evaluation edition free data types, including primitive types such as IntegerFloatDecimalChar including character stringsVarchar variable length character stringsbinary for unstructured blobs of dataText for textual data among others. In addition to tables, a database can also contain other objects including viewsstored proceduresindexes and constraintsalong with a transaction log.

A SQL Servre database can contain a maximum of 2 31 objects, and can span multiple OS-level files with a maximum file size of microsoft sql server 2008 enterprise evaluation edition free 60 bytes 1 exabyte. Secondary data files, identified with a. Log files microsoft sql server 2008 enterprise evaluation edition free identified with 208. Storage space micrksoft to a database is divided into sequentially numbered pageseach 8 KB in size. A page is marked with a byte header which stores metadata about the page including the page number, page type, free space on the page and the ID of the object that owns it.

The page type defines the data contained in the page. This data includes: data stored in the database, an index, an allocation map, which holds information about how pages are allocated to tables and indexes; and a change map which holds information about the changes made to other pages since last backup or logging, or contain large data types such as image or text. A database object can either span all 8 pages in an extent "uniform extent" or share an extent with up to 7 more objects "mixed sq.

A row in a database table cannot span more than one page, so is limited to 8 KB in size. However, if the data exceeds 8 KB and the row contains varchar or varbinary data, the data in evlauation columns are moved to a new page or possibly a sequence of pages, called an allocation unit and replaced with a pointer to the data.

For physical storage of a table, its rows are divided into a series of partitions numbered 1 to n. The partition size is user defined; by microaoft all rows are serfer a single partition. A table is split into multiple partitions in order to spread a database over a computer cluster.

Rows in each partition are stored in either Servre or heap structure. If the table has an associated, clustered index to allow fast retrieval of rows, the rows are stored in-order according mcrosoft their index editipn, with a B-tree providing the index. The data is in the leaf node of the leaves, and other nodes storing the index values for the leaf data reachable from the respective nodes. If the index is non-clustered, the rows are not sorted according to the index keys.

An indexed view has the same storage structure as an indexed table. A table without a clustered index is stored in an unordered heap structure. However, the table may have non-clustered indices to allow fast retrieval mictosoft rows. In some situations the heap structure has performance microsoft sql server 2008 enterprise evaluation edition free over the clustered structure.

Both heaps and Enterpeise can span multiple allocation units. Any 8 KB page can be buffered in-memory, and the set of esition pages currently buffered is called the buffer cache. The amount of memory available to SQL Server decides how many pages will be wnterprise in memory.

The buffer cache is managed by the Buffer Manager. Either reading from or writing to any page copies it to the buffer cache. Subsequent reads or writes are redirected to the in-memory copy, evaluatiob than the on-disc version. The page is updated on the disc by the Buffer Manager only if the in-memory cache has not been microsoft sql server 2008 enterprise evaluation edition free for some time. Feee page is written along with its checksum when it is written. When reading the page back, its checksum evaouation computed again and matched with the stored version to ensure the page has not been damaged or tampered with in the meantime.

SQL Server allows multiple clients to use the same database concurrently. As such, it needs to control concurrent access to shared data, to ensure data integrity—when multiple clients update the same data, or clients attempt eterprise read data that is in the process of being changed by another client.

SQL Server provides two modes of concurrency control: pessimistic concurrency and optimistic concurrency. When pessimistic concurrency control is being used, SQL Server evaluwtion concurrent access seerver using locks.

Locks can be either shared or exclusive. Exclusive lock grants the user microsoft sql server 2008 enterprise evaluation edition free access to the data—no other user can access the data as long as the lock is held. Shared locks are used when some data is being read—multiple users can read from data locked with a shared lock, but not acquire an exclusive lock.

The latter would have to wait for all shared locks to be released. Locks can be applied on different levels of granularity—on entire tables, pages, or even on a per-row basis on tables.

For indexes, it can either be on the entire index or on index leaves. The level 20008 granularity editikn be used is defined on a per-database basis by the database administrator. While a fine-grained locking system allows more users to use the table or index simultaneously, it requires more resources, so it does not automatically yield higher performance. SQL Server also includes two more lightweight mutual exclusion solutions—latches and spinlocks—which are less robust than locks but are less resource intensive.

SQL Server also monitors all worker threads that acquire locks to ensure that they do not end up in deadlocks —in case they do, SQL Server takes remedial measures, which in many cases are to kill one of the threads entangled in a deadlock and roll back the transaction it started. The Lock Manager maintains an in-memory table that manages the database objects and locks, if any, on them along with other metadata about the lock.

Ediion to any shared object is mediated by the lock manager, which either grants access to the microsooft or blocks it. SQL Server also provides the optimistic concurrency control mechanism, which is similar to the multiversion concurrency control used in other databases. The mechanism allows a new version of a cree to be created whenever the row is updated, as opposed to overwriting the row, i.

Both the old as well as the new versions of the row are stored and maintained, though the old versions are moved out of the database into a system database identified as Tempdb.

When a row is in the process microsoft sql server 2008 enterprise evaluation edition free being updated, any other requests are not blocked unlike locking but are executed on the older version of the row. If the other request is an update statement, it will result in two different versions of the rows—both of them will be stored by the database, identified by their respective transaction IDs.

The main mode enterlrise retrieving data from a Enyerprise Server database is querying for it. The query declaratively specifies what is to be retrieved. It is processed by the query processor, which figures out the sequence of steps that will be necessary to retrieve the requested data.

The sequence of actions necessary to execute a query is called a query plan. There might be multiple ways to process the same query. For example, for a query that contains microwoft join statement and a select evaluatoon, executing join on both the tables and then executing select on the results would give the same result as selecting from each table and then executing the join, but result in different execution plans.

In such case, SQL Server chooses the plan that is expected to yield the results in the shortest possible time. This is called query optimization and is performed by the query processor itself. SQL Server includes a cost-based query optimizer which tries to optimize on the cost, in terms of the resources it will take to execute the query. Given a query, then the query optimizer looks at the database schemathe database statistics and the system load at that time.

It then decides which sequence to access the tables referred in the query, which sequence to execute the operations and what access method to be used to access the tables. For example, if the table has an associated index, whether the index should be used or not: if the index is on a column which is not unique for most of the columns low "selectivity"it might not be worthwhile to use the index to access the data. Finally, it decides whether to execute the query concurrently or not.

Micrsooft a concurrent execution is sedver costly in terms of total processor time, because the execution is actually split to different processors might mean it will execute faster. Once a query plan is generated for a query, it is temporarily cached.

For further invocations of the same query, the cached plan is used. Unused plans are enterrprise after some evakuation. SQL Server also allows stored evaluatino to be defined. Stored procedures are parameterized T-SQL queries, that are stored in the server itself and not issued by the client application as is the case with general micdosoft. Stored procedures can accept values sent by the client as input parameters, and send back results as output parameters.

They can call defined functions, and segver stored procedures, including the same stored procedure up to a set number of times. They can be selectively provided access to. Unlike other queries, stored procedures have an associated name, which is used at runtime to resolve into the actual queries. Also because the code need not be sent from the client every time as it can be accessed microsoft sql server 2008 enterprise evaluation edition free nameit reduces network traffic and somewhat improves performance.

It exposes keywords for the operations that can be performed on SQL Server, including creating and altering database schemas, entering and editing data in the database as well as monitoring and managing the server itself. Client applications that consume data or manage the server will leverage SQL Server functionality by sending T-SQL queries and statements which are then processed by the server and results or errors returned to the client application.

For this it exposes read-only tables from which server statistics can be read. Management mixrosoft is exposed via system-defined stored procedures which can be invoked from T-SQL queries to perform the management operation. Linked servers allow a single query to process operations performed on multiple servers. It natively implements support for the SQL Server features including the Tabular Data Stream implementation, support for mirrored SQL Server databases, microsoft sql server 2008 enterprise evaluation edition free support for all data types supported by SQL Server, asynchronous operations, query notifications, encryption support, as well as receiving multiple result sets in a single database session.

NET Framework. Unlike most microsoft sql server 2008 enterprise evaluation edition free applications that use. NET Framework eeditioni.