Scalability

Customers must protect their investments in business applications, and as organizations grow, the database must grow to handle more data, transactions, and users. SQL Server 7.0 delivers a single database engine that scales from a laptop computer running the Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows 98 operating system to terabyte-size symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) clusters running the Microsoft Windows NT Server, Enterprise Edition, operating system. All of these systems must maintain the security and reliability demanded by mission-critical business systems.

These storage engine features are the foundation for scalability:

• New disk format and storage subsystem to provide storage that is scalable from small to large databases
• Redesigned utilities to support terabyte-size databases efficiently
• Large memory support to reduce the need for frequent disk access
• Dynamic row-level locking to allow increased concurrency, especially for online transaction processing (OLTP) applications
• Unicode support to allow for multinational applications