Reporting Services in SQL Server 2008
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services provides a complete server-based platform that is designed to support a wide variety of reporting needs including managed enterprise reporting, ad-hoc reporting, embedded reporting, and web based reporting to enable organizations to deliver relevant information where needed across the entire enterprise. Reporting Services 2008 provides the tools and features necessary to author a variety of richly formatted reports from a wide range of data sources and provides a comprehensive set of familiar tools used to manage and secure an enterprise reporting solution. Reports are processed and delivered quickly and effectively, enabling users to either receive reports automatically through subscriptions, to access reports from a central report repository on an ad-hoc basis, or to consume reports in context of their business processes through reports directly embedded into their business or web applications.
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/whitepapers/sql_2008_ssrs.mspx
What's New for XML in SQL Server 2008
Microsoft introduced XML-related capabilities in Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with the FOR XML and OPENXML Transact-SQL keywords, which enabled developers to write Transact-SQL code to retrieve a query result as a stream of XML, and to shred an XML document into a rowset. SQL Server 2005 extended these XML capabilities significantly with the introduction of a native xml data type that supports XSD schema validation, XQuery-based operations, and XML indexing. SQL Server 2008 builds on the XML capabilities of previous releases and provides enhancements to meet the challenges that customers have faced when storing and manipulating XML data in the database.
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/whitepapers/sql_2008_xml.mspx
Managing Unstructured Data with SQL Server 2008
The proliferation of digital content has significant implications for the way in which organizations store and access business data. Increasingly, databases that are at the core of business applications must be integrated with unstructured data in the form of documents, images, video content, and other multimedia formats. Organizations increasingly need to be able to store and manage digital data of all formats in order to manage the information lifecycle, meet compliance requirements, and implement content management solutions. Microsoft SQL Server™ 2008 provides a flexible solution for storing unstructured data and combining it with relational data to build comprehensive solutions that encompass the full range of data across an organization.
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/whitepapers/sql_2008_unstructured.mspx
Delivering Location Intelligence with Spatial Data
The growing ability of businesses and consumers to quickly absorb large volumes of data, together with the increased availability of digital maps and spatially-enabled applications has created an unprecedented opportunity to incorporate geographic factors into decision making processes and analysis. The new spatial support in Microsoft SQL Server™ 2008 can help you to make better decisions through visual analysis of location data that can be stored and manipulated in a SQL Server database.
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/whitepapers/spatialdata.mspx
SQL Server 2008 Security Overview for Database Administrators
SQL Server 2008 is secure by design, default, and deployment. Microsoft is committed to communicating information about threats, countermeasures, and security enhancements as necessary to keep your data as secure as possible. This paper covers some of the most important security features in SQL Server 2008. It tells you how, as an administrator, you can install SQL Server securely and keep it that way even as applications and users make use of the data stored within.
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/whitepapers/SQL2008_Sec_Overview.mspx
Server Consolidation with SQL Server 2008
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 supports multiple options for server consolidation, which provides organizations with the flexibility to choose the consolidation approach that best meets their requirements to centralize data services management and reduce hardware and maintenance costs. By providing centralized management, auditing, and monitoring capabilities, SQL Server 2008 makes it easy to manage multiple databases and data services, which significantly reduces administrative overheads in large enterprises. Finally, SQL Server 2008 provides the reassurance of industry-leading performance and scalability, and unprecedented control over server resource to maximize the performance of consolidated data services.
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/whitepapers/sql_srv_consol.mspx
Microsoft Synchronization Services for ADO.NET Books Online Synchronization Services lets you synchronize data from disparate sources over two-tier, N-tier, and service-based architectures. Instead of only replicating a database and its schema, the Synchronization Services application programming interface (API) provides a set of components to synchronize data between data services and a local store. Applications are increasingly used on mobile clients, such as portable computers and devices, that do not have a consistent or reliable network connection to a central server. It is important for these applications to work against a local copy of data on the client. Equally important is the need to synchronize the local copy of the data with a central server when a network connection is available. The Synchronization Services API is modelled after the ADO.NET data access APIs and gives you an intuitive way to synchronize data. It makes building applications for occasionally connected environments a logical extension of building applications where you can depend on a consistent network connection.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=02989f70-49aa-43d7-81b8-a651120f8d65&DisplayLang=en
Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 Books Online and Samples
SQL Server Compact 3.5 Books Online provides in-depth information about the features of the product. In addition to the Books Online, the sample applications helps to ramp up quickly on SQL Server Compact technology and an easy way to build applications rapidly. For information about Microsoft Synchronization Services for ADO.Net v1.0 download the Books Online
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1ff0529a-eb1f-4044-b4b7-40b00710f7b7&DisplayLang=en
Scale-Out Querying with Analysis Services Using SAN Snapshots
This SQL Server Best Practices white paper describes the use of virtual copy SAN snapshots in a load-balanced scalable querying environment for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services to increase the number of concurrent queries to Analysis Services servers with a rapid response time per query. Load-balanced querying distributes the load of all queries among the available servers. The use of the virtual copy SAN snapshots eliminates the need to copy data between an Analysis Services processing server and one or more dedicated Analysis Services query servers. This paper supplements the Scale-Out Querying with Analysis Services white paper.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=7AC8E03D-BF1F-4733-93E0-BC0F6E567608&displaylang=en