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SQL Server 2008 enables you to store data from structured, semi-structured, and unstructured documents, such as images and music, directly within the database. SQL Server 2008 delivers a rich set of integrated services that enable you to do more with your data such as query, search, synchronise, report, and analyse.

Usage Scenarios

• Run business-critical data management applications with enterprise-class scalability, high availability, and security
• Manage online transaction processing (OLTP) on a very large scale
• Perform advanced analytics on large amounts of data in data warehouses
• Create reports on the analysis of large amounts of data

• Use Resource Governor to manage concurrent workloads
• Enforce policy compliance consistently across the enterprise with the Policy-Based Management
• Reduce storage requirements and increase query performance with data compression and Sparse Columns
• Protect sensitive data with Transparent Data Encryption and advanced auditing
• Troubleshoot, tune, and monitor SQL Server 2008 instances across the enterprise with Performance System Analysis
• Build high performance analysis solutions with scalability, performance, data mining, and user interface enhancements in SQL Server Analysis Services
• Take advantage of improved performance, usability, visualization, and integration with the 2007 Microsoft Office system in SQL Server Reporting Services
• Integrate location-enabled applications through support for spatial data

Protect Your Data
Dynamically encrypt your valuable data within an entire database, data files, or log files, without the need for application changes. Simplify increasing regulatory compliance by using the advanced data auditing abilities of SQL Server 2008. Minimize exposure to security attacks by using the SQL Server Configuration Manager to enable only the services you require and Policy-Based Management to enable only the features you require.

Ensure Business Continuity
Seamlessly increase the reliability of applications with Database Mirroring. Simplify the recovery of applications from storage failures. Transfer operational data between the active operational systems and backup systems. Add system resources, like CPU and memory, without affecting applications.

Provide Predictable Response
Ensure consistent performance by using Resource Governor to define resource limits and priorities for different workloads and enable consistent performance. Reduce your storage costs and improve performance of large I/O bound workloads by using data compression.

Spend Less Time on Operations
Manage your enterprise data infrastructure easily with Policy- Based Management. Reduce the time spent on daily maintenance operations by defining a common set of policies for most database operations like query optimizations, naming conventions, backup and restore operations, and index management. Apply policies to many servers for consistent management across the enterprise. Enable Performance System Analysis by collecting performance data from your system and storing it in a centralized data repository. View reports to benchmark and analyze system performance and health.

Accelerate Development
Access data by defining business entities instead of tables and columns with the ADO.NET Entity Framework. Query and retrieve these entities natively within any .NET language with Language Integrated Query (LINQ). Enable developers to work with the logical entity model, and administrators to define the physical implementation of the model as tables and columns.

Access Your Data from Anywhere
Create flexible, occasionally connected applications that can function when disconnected from the network. Create a next generation of applications that can work on a local data store and automatically synchronize the local store with a central store when a connection is available.

Store and Consume Any Type of Data
Use the new FILESTREAM data type to manage unstructured data such as documents and images outside the database. Store XML efficiently and enable easy access with XQuery. Improve the handling of temporal data by using new date and time data types.

Deliver Location Intelligence
Consume, use, and extend location-based data through spatial-enabled applications. Build location-aware applications by using new spatial data capabilities in SQL Server 2008.

Integrate Any Data
Scale and manage large numbers of users and data with improved query performance on large tables. Optimize queries for data warehousing scenarios, and increase I/O performance with efficient and cost effective data storage. Integrate growing volumes of data from disparate systems with the scalable data integration features of Integration Services. Consolidate real-time data into the data warehouse with Change Data Capture functionality.

Deliver Relevant Information
Empower users to answer complex questions by providing the relevant information through reports with powerful visualizations and rendered in Microsoft Office Word 2007 and Microsoft Office Excel® 2007. Enable users to create complex reports and share them internally and externally with customers and partners.

Drive Actionable Insight
Provide a consistent set of key performance indicators (KPIs) and business metrics to all users by using the comprehensive and scalable analysis platform of SQL Server Analysis Services that has intuitive access through Office Excel 2007. Integrated Data Mining enables predictive analysis so you can investigate common issues like forecasting and identifying key influencers for decisions. Develop scalable analysis models with enhanced designers that incorporate best practices into the design experience. Increase the scale and performance of analysis by using enhanced analytical capabilities and complex computations and aggregations.