SQL server

SQL server is available in several versions. 

• SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition
• SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition
• SQL Server 2000 Windows® CE Edition (SQL Server CE)
• SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition
• SQL Server 2000 Personal Edition
• SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE)

Different versions are suited for different business requirements and operating systems. At this point I would just like to point out that the SQL server is currently only compatible with Windows Operation systems. Below I have given a short review of the Enterprise Edition. 

Enterprise Edition 

Enterprise Edition includes the complete set of SQL Server data management and analysis features and is uniquely characterized by several features that make it the most scalable and available edition of SQL Server 2000. It scales to the performance levels required to support the largest Web sites, Enterprise Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) systems and Data Warehousing systems. Its support for fail over clustering also makes it ideal for any mission critical line-of-business application. Additionally, this edition includes several advanced analysis features that are not included in SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition.

There are four main areas in which the additional features of SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition are most evident:

• Scalability
• Availability/uptime
• Performance
• Advanced analysis

 

Locking in SQL Server 

Ms SQL Server 2000 allows different types of resources to be locked by transactions. SQL Server locks resources automatically at a level appropriate to the task. SQl Server can lock rows, Extents, tables and databases. There are also different locking modes that determine how the records are locked. Shared lock is used for operations that do not change or update data. Update locks for updates, Exclusive locks for data modifications, etc.

Comparing Oracle with SQL server.

There is an excellent review of both the databases OLAP feature on 'http://www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/compare/DSSOLAP.doc' site.  The site compares features offered by Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 OLAP Services, Service Pack 1 and Oracle Express 6.3.0 for an OLAP system based on a relational data warehouse. 

One of the points made in the review is that It took less than a-day-and-a-half to create all of the dimensions, cubes, attributes, and calculations for SQL Server 7.0 OLAP Services compared to the five days to design and implement equivalent structures in Oracle Express.'

With the above comment one can easily understand which is more user friendly and cost efficient.

'The review was on a Microsoft site.'