New Features SQL 2008By Tomer Lev, DATASITE

Policy Based Management

Policy-Based Management enables the efficient management of multiple SQL Server instances from a single location. Easily create policies that control security, database options, object naming conventions, and other settings at a highly granular level. Policies can evaluate servers for compliance with a set of predefined conditions and prevent undesirable changes being made to servers.

Policy Based Management

• Management is centralized, thereby reducing the need to configure each server separately

• Administration is simplified, reducing the effort required to maintain standardization and compliance, even in complex environments

• Configuration is straightforward and can be done entirely within SQL Server Management Studio

Data Collector

The Data Collector provides a convenient way to collect, store, and view performance data automatically. It collects disk usage, server activity, and query statistics data, which it loads in a management data warehouse and performance data can be reviewed in SQL Server Management Studio or by using third-party tools.

Data Collector

• Setup Wizard makes configuration simple

• Data collection is automated by using set of SQL SERVER Agent jobs and SQL integration Services packages

• Management is centralized so data collection can be easily configured and results can be viewed in one place

• Performance impact is minimal because data can be cached and uploaded later to the DWH

Resource Governor

The Resource Governor enables administrators to control and allocate CPU and memory resources to high priority applications. This enables predictable performance to be maintained and helps avoid performance from being negatively affected by resource-intense applications or processes

Resource Governor

• Prioritize applications, users, and computers competing for the same resources

• Prevent runaway queries that hold resources for extended periods of time

• Limitations are not enforced when there is no competition for resources

Transparent Data Encryption

Transparent Data Encryption enables data to be stored securely by encrypting the database files. If the disks that contain database files become compromised, data in those files is protected because that data can only be de-encrypted by an authorized agent. SQL Server performs the encryption and de-encryption directly, so the process is entirely transparent to connecting applications.

Transparent Data Encryption

• Implements strong encryption keys and certificates to secure data

• Applications do not need to be modified to support Transparent Data Encryption

• Enables compliance with data privacy regulations

• Does not increase the size of the database

Data Auditing

Data Auditing provides a simple way to track and log events relating to your databases and servers. You can audit logons, password changes, data access and modification, and many other events. Tracking these events helps maintain security and can also provide valuable troubleshooting information. The results of audits can be saved to file or to the Windows Security or Application logs for later analysis or archiving.

Data Auditing

• Enables compliance with security regulations

• Simple configuration using SQL Server Management Studio

• Minimal impact on performance because audit data is stored outside of SQL Server database files

Backup Compression

Backup compression enables the backup of a database to be compressed without having to compress the database itself. All backup types, including log backups, are supported and data is automatically uncompressed upon restore.

Backup Compression

• Save storage space• Compressed backups can be stored

on tape or on disk• Simple configuration using SQL

Server Management Studio• Default state of all backups on a

server to be compressed can be configured

Grouping Sets Use GROUPING SETS to obtain

results similar to those generated by using CUBE and ROLLUP, however GROUPING SETS is more flexible, offers better performance, and is ANSI SQL 2006 compliant. GROUPING SETS enables the GROUP BY clause to generate multiple grouped aggregations in a single result set. It is equivalent to using UNION ALL to return a result set from multiple SELECT statements, each of which has a GROUP BY clause.

Grouping Sets

• Simplifies the process of writing basic reports that include aggregates

• Offers better performance and flexibility compared with other ways of accessing the same data

Merge Operator

The new MERGE operator streamlines the process of populating a data warehouse from a source database. For example, rows that get updated in the source database will probably already exist in the data warehouse but rows that are inserted into the source database will not already exist in the data warehouse. (insert or update) can be performed against the data warehouse in one single call.

Merge Operator

• Provides a streamlined mechanism for performing ‘UPSERT (INSERT and UPDATE) operations

• Reduces the need to use other less performance-efficient methods such as Lookup transformations, to achieve the same functionality

• Provides an efficient, granular level of control

Change Data Capture Use Change Data Capture (CDC) to

track changes to the data in your tables. CDC uses a SQL Server Agent job to capture insert, update and delete activity. This information is stored in a relational table, from where it can be accessed by data consumers such as SQL Server 2008 Integration Services. Use CDC in conjunction with Integration Services to incrementally populate data warehouses, enabling you to produce more frequent reports that contain up-to-date information.

Change Data Capture

• Simplifies the process of capturing changed data and making it available to consumers

• Provides relatively low impact on performance because triggers and replication is not required

• Improves accuracy of reports by making recent changes to data more readily available

• A SQL Server Agent job automatically cleans up CDC system tables so that they do not grow too large.

Table Valued Parameter

Table-Valued Parameters (TVPs) allows stored procedures to accept and return lists of parameters. Developers can write applications that pass sets of data into stored procedures rather than just one value at a time. Table-valued parameters make the development of stored procedures that manipulate data more straightforward and can improve performance by reducing the number of times a procedure needs to call a database

Table Valued Parameter

• Eliminates the need to use less efficient methods of processing data sets, such as passing XML data into stored procedures

• Reduces complexity and simplifies the process of working with data sets for developers

Spatial data with GEOGRAPHY and GEOMETRY data types• New GEOGRAPHY and GEOMETRY

data types allow spatial data to be stored directly in a SQL Server 2008 database. Use these spatial data types to work with location-based data that describes physical locations, such as longitude and latitude.

• GEOGRAPHY enables you to represent three-dimensional geodetic data such as GPS applications use. GEOMETRY enables you to represent two-dimensional planar data such as points on maps.

Spatial data with GEOGRAPHY and GEOMETRY data types• Store spatial data natively in SQL

Server2008 databases• Describe physical locations natively

using industry standards such as WGS84

• Integrate SQL Server 2008 with Microsoft Virtual Earth to display location data visually

Sparse Columns

Sparse columns provide an efficient way to store NULL data in tables by not requiring NULL values to take up space. Applications that reference sparse columns can access them in the same way as they access regular columns. Multiple sparse columns in a table are supported by using a column set.

Sparse Columns

• Save significant storage space for tables contain lots of NULL data

• Define how NULL values are handled on a column by column basis provides granular control

• Filtered indexes built on sparse columns provide improved performance.

FILESTREAM Data

FILESTREAM enables binary large object (BLOB) data to be stored in the Microsoft Windows NTFS file system instead of in a database file. Data that is stored using FILESTREAM behaves like any other data type and can be manipulated using T-SQL select, insert, update and delete statements.

FILESTREAM Data• Provides improved performance for

read access since FILESTREAM data is managed directly by Windows NTFS

• No imposed maximum size for FILESTEAM data means you are only limited by the size of the volume that stores the data.

• BLOB data participates seamlessly in transactions, rollbacks and backup operations

• Storage and management of unstructured data is simplified

Tomer Lev