Understanding the components in SQL Server 2008.

SQL Server 2008 consists of the following components.

1. Database Engine

2. Integration services

3. Analysis Services

4. Reporting Services

1. Database Engine.

The database engine provides support to store, query, process, the core service for storing, replication, full-text search, and tools for managing relational and XML data. and secure data on the database server. The database engine contains database and objects, such as tables and procedures. This database engine allows you to create and manage database objects.

A part from providing support for data management, the database engine also provides the following background services.

a. Services Broker:

Asynchronous communication between clients and the database server, enabling query processing. The client’s application sends a request to the database server and continues to work. The requests sent by the client are queued up at the server, in case the server is not available to process the request immediately.

b. Replication:

Allows you to copy and distribute data and database objects from one database server to another. These servers can be located at remote locations to provide fast access to users at widely distributed locations. After replicating data, the SQL Server allows you to synchronize different database to maintain data consistency.

c. Full-Text Search:

Allows you to implement fast and intelligent search in large database by allowing you to search record containing certain words and phrases

d. Notification Services:

Generate and send notification messages to the users or administrators about any event.

2. Integration Services.

Integration Services allow you to gather and integrate data from various disparate data sources available in an organization. Integration Services is a set of graphical tools and programmable objects for moving, copying, and transforming data. You can store the data in a consistent format in a common database called data warehouse.

3. Analysis Services.

Analysis services help in data analysis in a BI application. The applications are built on a data warehouse that contains data consolidated from various data sources. Analysis Services includes the tools for creating and managing online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining applications. These services provide data mining solutions that are built on data integrated in data warehouse.

4. Reporting Services.

Reporting Services provide support to generate comprehensive reports on data in the database engine or in the data warehouse. These services provide a set of tools that help in creating and managing different type of report in different formats.