InstallingSQLServer2008•Chapter2 37 The key database engine features in the Enterprise Edition address scalability, high availability, and security. Scalability is the ability to add more resources. In SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, this is achieved by scaling up servers by adding additional CPUs, memory, or disks to a single server or by scaling out by moving certain services or databases to other servers. The key scalability features in SQL Server 2008 database engine include: Partitioning Segmenting of data in large tables and indexes into units that can be distributed across multiple filegroups in a database to improve IO performance. Partitioning is very useful in improving the performance of very large OLTP and data-warehousing databases. Data compression Reduces the size of tables, indexes, or partitions, thereby reducing the database disk requirements. Resource governor Provides control over the amount of CPU and memory allocated to SQL Server 2008 workloads without any application changes. Partition table parallelism Improves the query processing performance on partitioned tables for parallel queries by enhancing the partitioning information in the compile-time and runtime execution plans. Multi-instance support Establishes the maximum number of SQL Server 2008 instances that can be created on a server. Enterprise Edition supports up to 50 instances on a server, Compact Edition only supports one instance, and all the other editions support up to 16 instances. Log shipping Allows you to automatically send transaction log backups from a primary database on a primary server instance to one or more secondary databases on separate secondary server instances. Log shipping supports the high availability option of database mirroring. The Express and Mobile editions do not support this feature. Replication Enables a primary database server to distribute data to one or more secondary servers. Partitioning, data compression, and partition table parallelism are exclusive to the SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition. Also note that some replication features are very limited or not available in the Standard Edition. 38 Chapter2•InstallingSQLServer2008 High availability refers to the availability of system resources when a component in the system fails. Please note that both log shipping and replication are considered as features of availability as well as scalability. The high availability features only available in the Enterprise Edition include: Database snapshots Provide a read-only static version of a source database on the same database instance. One of the many uses of database snapshots is creating separate databases for reporting that are separate from online transactions. Fast recovery Allows users access the database while the database is rolling back uncommitted transactions. Only the uncommitted transactions during the crash are locked till the rollback of the transaction is complete. Online indexing Allows index maintenance operations to be performed while the database is online and active. Online restore Enables the restoring of backup files using multiple filegroups while the database is still online. Mirrored backups Add redundancy of backup media, thereby increasing backup reliability. Backup compression Provides smaller backup files, thereby reducing disk space resources. Hot Add Memory and CPU Provide the ability to add memory or addition processors without a system reboot. New & Noteworthy… Partition-Aware Seek Operation Query performance on partitioned tables is significantly enhanced in SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition. In SQL Server 2008 partitioned tables are treated like tables with an index on the partition ID column. This allows the creation and management of simpler query plans and improved performance by using the partition’s column and function. InstallingSQLServer2008•Chapter2 39 In the area of security, the Enterprise Edition is the only edition that supports SQL Server auditing and transparent database encryption. SQL Server auditing provides a simpler mechanism using T-SQL to trigger, store, and view audits. An example of an audit implementation is to track log-on activity of specific user accounts or groups. Transparent database encryption (TDE) encrypts the database data and log files, meeting the regulatory or corporate data security standards without requiring application changes. In terms of replication, the Enterprise Edition supports Oracle publishing and peer to peer (P2P) transactional replication. Oracle publishing allows an Oracle database to transmit data via replication to a SQL Server instance. P2P transactional replication provides copies of data that are transaction consistent in near real-time to all servers participating in the replication topology scheme. Integration Services in SQL Server 2008, provided in the Enterprise and Standard Editions, have the most of the Integration Services features, while the other editions have very limited features as noted in Table 2.2. Integration Services Feature Enterprise Standard Workgroup Web Express SQL Server Import and Export Wizard with basic sources and destinations and Execute SQL task Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Integration Services runtime Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Integration Services API and object model Yes Yes Yes Yes Integration Services service, wizards, and command-line utilities Yes Yes Basic tasks and transformations Yes Yes Log providers and logging Yes Yes Data profiling tools Yes Yes Table 2.2 SQL Server 2008 Integration Services Features by Edition Continued 40 Chapter2•InstallingSQLServer2008 Integration Services Feature Enterprise Standard Workgroup Web Express Additional sources and destinations: Raw File source XML source DataReader destination Raw File destination Recordset destination SQL Server Compact destination SQL Server destination Yes Yes Advanced sources, transformations, and destinations: Data Mining Query transformation Fuzzy Lookup and Fuzzy Grouping transformations Term Extraction and Term Lookup transformations Data Mining Model Training destination Dimension Processing destination Partition Processing destination Yes Table 2.2 Continued. SQL Server 2008 Integration Services Features by Edition InstallingSQLServer2008•Chapter2 41 Table 2.3 lists the key Analysis Services features between the Enterprise and Standard Editions in the area of Data Warehouse creation, scale and performance, multidimensional analytics, and data mining. Analysis Services is not available in the Workgroup, Web, Express, and Compact Editions. Feature Group Feature Name Enterprise Standard Data Warehouse Creation Create cubes without a database Yes Yes Auto-generate staging and data warehouse schema Yes Yes Attribute relationship designer Yes Yes Efficient aggregation designers Yes Yes Data Warehouse Scale and Performance Change data capture Yes Star join query optimization Yes Scalable read-only AS configuration Yes Proactive caching Yes Auto parallel partition processing Yes Partitioned cubes Yes Distributed partitioned cubes Yes Multidimensional Analytics SQL Server Analysis Services service Yes Yes SQL Server Analysis Services backup Yes Yes General performance/scale improvements Yes Yes Table 2.3 SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services Features by Edition Continued . performance by using the partition’s column and function. Installing SQL Server 2008 •Chapter2 39 In the area of security, the Enterprise Edition is the only edition that supports SQL Server auditing. significantly enhanced in SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition. In SQL Server 2008 partitioned tables are treated like tables with an index on the partition ID column. This allows the creation and management. scheme. Integration Services in SQL Server 2008, provided in the Enterprise and Standard Editions, have the most of the Integration Services features, while the other editions have very limited