Oracle vs. SQL Server, Part 3 - A Closer Look at SQL Server
- Introduction to SQL Server 2000
- Availability Features
- Environmental/Hardware Features
- Database Engine
- Summary
Introduction to SQL Server 2000
Before we can really compare the world's greatest RDBMSs, we need to get an idea of the features in both of these products. We'll begin by taking a look at Microsoft's SQL Server 2000both good and bad. Later articles will take a look at Oracle 9i and the pure power that Oracle's product brings to the table.
NOTE
Obviously, I can't cover all the features of SQL Server 2000 here; there are just too many for a series of short articles! Instead, I'll discuss the relevant features compared to those of Oracle 9i. There are many very good books on SQL Server 2000 (including my own, of course) that provide an introduction to the complete features and benefits of the RDBMS.
This article and the next cover the features of SQL Server in six main categories:
- Availability
- Environmental/Hardware
- Database Engine
- Structured Query Language (SQL) Support
- Analysis Services (OLAP)
- General Enhancements (such as XML and DTS)
This article covers the first three categories above, which should begin to paint a pretty good picture for you with regard to the scalability and availability features of SQL Server 2000.
SQL Server 2000 is one of the richest RDBMS platforms in the world today. It combines a very full feature set with a rich and easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI), and of course provides native support for ANSI-SQL 92 (American National Standards Institute), as well as Microsoft's own Transact SQL (T-SQL). Combined with some of the best performance and price ratings on the TPC-C performance benchmarks web site, and seamless integration into existing Microsoft solutions, it's little wonder that organizations are seriously considering SQL Server 2000 for their application requirements.
Let's take a look at how you can achieve almost 99% uptime with SQL Server 2000 by utilizing the built-in availability features of the RDBMS.