Database files are normally stored in a proprietary binary format that can only be mounted by an instance of the relational database software that created them.

The purpose of the database instance is to to manage and deliver the data held within the database files for the users.

Modern Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) provide a declarative natural language abstraction layer called SQL to query the data held within the database, and provides ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) based transactions as a key feature and benefit over other alternatives for data storage.

This is what I found so far:

• LocalDB
• Sequences
• SQL users without Instance logins
• File Tables
• THROW statement
• Support for up to 15,000 partitions
• Columnstore indexes
• User-defined server roles
• Default schemas for a Windows NT Group
• ad-hoc query paging for SELECT statements
• Support for importing and exporting Spatial data types natively using the SSMS Import/Export utility. For those of you wondering, this is a SSMS client enhancement and in my testing export/import of spatial tables worked between two SQL 2008 R2 databases where it would error on any table containing a spatial data type using the SSMS 2008 R2 client. Thank you SQL Dev Team.

New Functions:

Still wishing for:

In Microsoft SQL Server 2005, a schema is a collection of objects adhering to the ANSI SQL-92 standard.

The ANSI SQL-92 standard defines a schema as a collection of database objects that are owned by a single principle and form a single namespace.

All objects within a schema must be uniquely named and a schema must be uniquely named in the database catalog. SQL Server 2005 breaks the link between users and schemas, users do not own objects. Schemas own objects and principles own schemas.

A schema can be owned by either a primary or secondary principle, with the term “principle” meaning any SQL Server entity that can access securable objects.

Principle types that can own schemas:

• Primary
  • SQL Server Login
  • Database User
  • Windows Login
• Secondary
  • SQL Server Roles
  • Windows Groups
  • Default Schemas

Users can now have a default schema assigned using the DEFAULT_SCHEMA option of CREATE USER and ALTER USER commands. If no default schema is supplied for a user then DBO will be used as the default schema.

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SQL Server 2005 Schema Objects

• Tables
• Indexes
• Views
• Synonyms
• Stored Procedures
• Triggers
• Functions
• Assemblies
• Types
• Defaults

The Microsoft SQL Server 2008 System Views Map shows the key system views included in SQL Server 2008, and the relationships between them.

1. INSERT (Transact-SQL Row Constructors) – Allows the ability to add one or more new rows to a table or a view. Seems novel but not sure how useful in practice.
2. MERGE Statement. This new Transact-SQL statement performs INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE operations on a target table based on the results of a join with a source table. Oracle has had this statement for years. I am glad Microsoft has finally added it to TSQL.
3. Full-Text Search: Full-text search is now a fully integrated feature of a database. Wow that took forever. I still remember the 8 hour Microsoft support call back in 2002, that included my rant session to support about the need for 1. Logging, 2. Database integration.
4. SP_DEPENDS: Identifies down to the columns of each table your stored procedure uses.

Things I am still waiting for:

1. Row Level Security
2. Something equivalent to the Oracle %ROWTYPE attribute in variable declarations as a datatype specifier.

• Exact Numerics
  • BIGINT
  • INT
  • SMALLINT
  • TINYINT
  • BIT bit
  • DECIMAL
  • NUMERIC
  • MONEY
  • SMALLMONEY
• Approximate Numerics
  • FLOAT
  • REAL
• Date and Time
  • DATETIME
  • SMALLDATETIME
• Character
  • CHAR
  • VARCHAR
  • TEXT
• Unicode Character
  • NCHAR
  • NVARCHAR
  • NTEXT
• Binary
  • BINARY
  • VARBINARY
  • IMAGE
• Other
  • CURSOR
  • SQL_VARIANT
  • TABLE
  • TIMESTAMP
  • UNIQUEIDENTIFIER
  • XML