Introduction

Every technology professional has faced issues concerning the availability and scalability of his or her hardware and software solutions. Continued commitment to making SQL Server a player in all markets, from handheld and portable applications to enterprise-scale database solutions, is evident in SQL Server 2000. This latest release of SQL Server provides support for up to 64GB of RAM and 32 processors, with Enterprise Edition running on Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. At the other end of the spectrum, SQL Server now boasts support for database development on Windows CE Edition. No other database system provides this level of platform scalability with a programming model that is this consistent, thus allowing SQL Server application developers to leverage their skills on any platform.

Improved platform support is complemented with scalability and availability enhancements, including distributed partitioned views through federated database servers. This scale-out approach allows database solutions to be distributed across numerous independent servers following a share-nothing approach to clustering while enhancing both scalability and availability. Indexed views, another addition to SQL Server 2000, will reduce the strain on many reporting-intensive database solutions such as OLAP systems.

SQL Server 2000 offers extended support for fail-over clustering, providing near 100 percent availability. The setup of SQL Server fail-over clustering is simplified by automatic detection of Windows 2000 cluster service. Enhanced cluster management improves usability. The new Log Shipping feature supports configuring warm standby servers for fail-over or read-only server roles.

Whether you are building a remote, distributed database application or a massive...