Graphical Administration Improvements and New Features

The easy-to-use interface in Microsoft® SQL Server™ version 7.0 has been enhanced to include the following features:

  

Microsoft Management Console

The Microsoft Management Console (MMC) is the new user interface and framework for Microsoft BackOffice® server management. This shared console provides a convenient and consistent environment for SQL Server and other console administration tools. The SQL Server console is SQL Server Enterprise Manager. MMC’s point-and-click user interface is similar to Windows Explorer.

  

Web Assistant Wizard

The Web Assistant Wizard has been enhanced in SQL Server 7.0. In addition to exporting SQL Server data out to an HTML file, it can also import tabular data from an HTML file into SQL Server, and post to and read from HTTP and FTP locations.

  

SQL Server Agent

Alerts can be defined to raise a response when an event occurs with a system or user-defined error or severity level. Alert responses are one or more of the following:

SQL Server Agent monitors events in the Windows NT application log. When an event occurs, SQL Server Agent compares the event details with the alerts defined for the environment. If a match is found, SQL Server Agent implements the specified alert response.

SQL Server jobs can increase system efficiency and productivity. Using the job features in SQL Server Enterprise Manager, the following tasks can be defined and edited:

  

SQL Server Query Analyzer

SQL Server Query Analyzer provides a way to analyze graphically the plan of a query, execute multiple queries simultaneously, view data, and choose indexes. SQL Server Query Analyzer provides the SHOWPLAN option that is used to report data retrieval methods chosen by the SQL Server optimizer and recommends optimal indexes to improve performance.

  

SQL Server Profiler

SQL Server Profiler captures a continuous picture of server activity in real time. You pick the items and events that you want to monitor, including Transact-SQL statements and batches, object usage, locking, security events, and errors. SQL Server Profiler filters these events. You can replay a recorded trace against the same or another server, reexecuting those recorded commands. By focusing on specific events, monitoring and debugging SQL Server is much easier.

  

Data Transformation Services

Data Transformation Services (DTS) provides the functionality to import, export, and transform data between SQL Server and any OLE DB, ODBC, or text file format. Using DTS, it is possible to build data warehouses and data marts in SQL Server by importing and transforming data from multiple heterogeneous sources interactively or automatically on a regularly scheduled basis (requiring no user intervention). Custom transformation objects can be created that integrate into third-party products.

Importing and exporting data is the process of exchanging data between applications by reading and writing data in a common format. For example, DTS can import data from an ASCII text file into SQL Server. Alternatively, data can be exported from SQL Server to an ODBC data source, or an Excel spreadsheet.

A transformation is the set of operations applied to source data before it can be stored in the destination. For example, DTS allows calculating new values from one or more source fields, or even breaking a single field into multiple values to be stored in separate destination columns. Transformations make it easy to implement complex data validation, scrubbing, and enhancements during import and export.

DTS supports multistep packages, where multiple files can be processed separately, then brought together in a single, final step. Records in a file can be broken up into multiple records in the destination, or multiple records in the source can be aggregated into single records in the destination.

DTS is also integrated with the Microsoft Repository, where it stores metadata, DTS packages, and data lineage, including sources of all transformed data.

DTS only moves schema and data between heterogeneous sources. Triggers, stored procedures, rules, defaults, constraints, and user-defined data types are not converted between heterogeneous data sources.

  

Index Tuning Wizard

  


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