What's New in SQL Server 7.0?

SQL Server 7.0 is the most significant release of SQL Server since the product's introduction in 1989. Two years in the making, SQL Server 7.0 has undergone profound changes in its core database engine, its management tools, and data access capabilities. Microsoft's primary goals for SQL Server 7.0 (code-named Sphinx) focus on scalability, ease-of-use, and data warehousing; SQL Server 7.0 makes significant strides in all three areas. Database administrators and systems administrators alike need to know about SQL Server 7.0's new features. For a quick look at the advantages and disadvantages of using this new release, see the sidebar "SQL Server 7.0's Pros and Cons."

Manage Databases with MMC
One of SQL Server 7.0's new features is the addition of the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) for SQL Server administration. MMC is the new standard management console for all BackOffice products because Microsoft wanted to provide a common management interface for the BackOffice suite.

SQL Server 7.0 includes an MMC snap-in component, the SQL Server Enterprise Manager (EM). Screen 1 shows this snap-in, which facilitates centralized management of multiple SQL Server systems. You can run MMC and the SQL Server EM on Windows 9x systems and Windows NT systems. Both platforms let you access all SQL Server 7.0 server and database configuration options.

SQL Server EM presents a tree view of the SQL Server objects in the left pane of the window and specific information about these objects in the right pane. SQL Server EM also provides several new management features. For example, you can directly modify table schema and data types of existing columns, and SQL Server EM will automatically generate and execute the required SQL scripts. In addition, SQL Server EM provides a new Table Open option to let you view the contents of a table, as you see in Screen 2.

Although the early beta versions of SQL Server 7.0 didn't support management of SQL Server 6.5 systems, Microsoft added this ability to later versions. However, you must install the SQL Server 6.5 client utilities and the SQL Server 7.0 client utilities to take advantage of this support.

Simplify Routine Tasks
SQL Server 7.0 introduces several administrative wizards that let you perform many common database management tasks including registering servers; creating databases, tables, indexes, stored procedures, alerts, database maintenance plans, and Web pages; setting up user security and database replication; scheduling backups; importing and exporting data; and tuning indexes. These wizards reduce the need to rely on stored procedures to perform these tasks. You select the links in the right pane of the SQL Server EM window to run most of these new wizards. Although Microsoft primarily designed these wizards to help new SQL Server administrators be immediately productive, the wizards also help experienced administrators quickly perform common tasks.

Analyze Graphical Queries
Another new and improved management tool is SQL Server 7.0's Query Analyzer. Query Analyzer is a vastly updated version of the SQL Server 6.5 ISQL/w utility. Similar to the older ISQL/w utility, Query Analyzer lets you interactively enter and execute SQL statements and create stored procedures. However, in addition to small improvements such as color-coded SQL syntax and grid output, Query Analyzer lets you graphically represent the different steps that the SQL Server's query processor uses to execute your query. Screen 3 shows a brief preview of Query Analyzer's graphical Show Plan, which shows how SQL Server processes the query.

Query Analyzer can quickly show you a lot of information about how SQL Server's query processor is working. In the top portion of Screen 3, you see an example SQL SELECT statement. The bottom portion of the screen shows you the steps the query processor performs to complete the select request. These steps read from right to left in chronological order.

In the example in Screen 3, the authors and the titleauthor tables from the pubs database provided the input on the far right. Note that different icons denote different access methods. The wide, straight green arrow on the authors table tells you that SQL Server or the query processor used an index scan to process this table; the thinner, bent green arrow on the titleauthor table means that SQL Server or the query processor used an index seek to process this table. In the middle of the screen, two nested loops ordered the data and the Compute Scaler function calculated the values the query needed to return a result set. Positioning the mouse pointer over any icon displays a pop-up menu that provides additional information about that processing step.

Other graphical management tools new to SQL Server 7.0 include the Visual Data Modeler and SQL Profiler. The Visual Data Modeler lets you graphically view and design database schema, and the SQL Profiler provides a graphical trace utility.

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