Beginning Microsoft SQL Server 2008 ... - S3 Tech Training

Everything works pretty much as one would expect here, so I’m not going to go into the details of how
to operate a help system. Suffice it to say that SQL Server Books Online is a great quick reference that follows
you to whatever machine you’re working on at the time.
SQL Ser ver Configuration Manager
Administrators who configure computers for database access are the main users of this tool, but it’s still
important to understand what this tool is about.
The SQL Server Configuration Manager combines some settings that were, in earlier releases, spread
across multiple tools into one spot. The items managed in the Configuration Manager fall into two areas:
❑ Service Management
❑ Network Configuration
Note that, while I'm only showing two major areas here, the Configuration Manager splits the Network
Configuration side of things up into multiple nodes.
Service Management
SQL Server is a large product and the various pieces of it utilize a host of services that run in the background
on your server. A full installation will encompass nine different services, and seven of these can
be managed from this part of the SQL Server Configuration Manager (the other two are services that act
as background support).
The services available for management here include:
Chapter 2: Tools of the Trade
Technically speaking, it’s quite possible that not every system you move to will have
Books Online (BOL) installed. This is because you can manually deselect BOL at the
time of installation. Even in tight space situations, however, I strongly recommend
that you always install BOL. It really doesn’t take up all that much space when you
consider cost per megabyte these days, and having that quick reference available wherever
you are running SQL Server can save you a fortune in time. (On my machine,
Books Online takes up roughly 110MB of space.)
❑ Integration Services — This powers the Integration Services engine that you look at in Chapter 18.
❑ Analysis Services — This powers the Analysis Services engine.
❑ Reporting Services — The underlying engine that supports Reporting Services.
❑ SQL Server Agent — The main engine behind anything in SQL Server that is scheduled. Utilizing
this service, you can schedule jobs to run on a variety of different schedules. These jobs can have
multiple tasks to them and can even branch into different tasks depending on the outcome of
some previous task. Examples of things run by the SQL Server Agent include backups, as well
as routine import and export tasks.
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