Foreword

It was back in 2000 when I first met Buck. He was president of Tampa SQL Server User Group, book author, and a site personality on InformIT.com. Buck continues to be an exceptionally dedicated and passionate contributor to the SQL Server community. Needless to say, I was quite pleased when Buck informed me of his plans to write such an important book. I knew that his knowledge and enthusiasm would make this project a great success. Therefore, it is with great pleasure that I write the foreword for this book, Administrator's Guide to Microsoft SQL Server 2005, by Greg "Buck" Woody, and congratulate him on this impressive accomplishment.

Since the release of Microsoft SQL Server 2000, the SQL Server team has been hard at work on a number of key additional features for SQL Server 2000, as well as on SQL Server 2005. In between the two major releases, the team released a Web Services Toolkit, an Accelerator for Business Intelligence, SQL Server Notification Services, SQL Server CE 2.0, a 64-bit Itanium version of SQL Server 2000, and finally SQL Server Reporting Services.

Now with the release of SQL Server 2005, Microsoft has further expanded the functionality and range of the SQL Server product family. This release has key new features in the areas of high availability, such as Database Mirroring and Online Indexing. Programmability has been enhanced with the integration of the .NET CLR and the introduction of SQL Server Service Broker. Improvements were made in the areas of business intelligence by the complete rewrite of SQL Server Integration Services and enhancements of SQL Server Analysis Services. In addition, we introduced support for the x64 platform to the existing 32-bit and Itanium platforms. SQL Server is now truly capable of running on the world's most challenging applications.

The goal of this book is to provide database administrators and their managers with the understanding and scenarios for leveraging these new technologies, along with the best practices necessary to manage SQL Server 2005 applications.

This book begins from a data architect's perspective of the product. It then covers the decision points by technology and provides guidance on how to implement SQL Server 2005.

This version of the product was a labor of love for dedicated professionals that make up the SQL Server product team. We would like to thank Buck for his support in writing this book. I sincerely hope that you enjoy this book as much as you will enjoy using SQL Server 2005.

Jean-Claude Armand

Senior SQL Server Technology Specialist

Microsoft Corporation