Administration Architecture

Each new version of Microsoft® SQL Server™ seeks to automate or eliminate some of the repetitive work performed by database administrators. Because database administrators are typically among the people most highly trained in database issues at a site, these improvements allow a valuable resource to spend more time working on database design and application data access issues.

The administration of SQL Server 2000 exhibits these characteristics:

• The SQL Server 2000 database server reduces administration work in many environments by dynamically acquiring and freeing resources. The server automatically acquires system resources such as memory and disk space when needed, and frees the resources when they are no longer required. Although large OLTP systems with critical performance needs are still monitored by trained administrators, SQL Server 2000 can also be used to implement smaller desktop or workgroup databases that do not require constant administrator attention.
  
  
• SQL Server 2000 provides a set of graphical tools that allow administrators to perform administrative tasks easily and efficiently.
  
  
• SQL Server 2000 provides a set of services that allow administrators to schedule the automatic execution of repetitive tasks.
  
  
• Administrators of SQL Server 2000 can program the server to handle exception conditions, or to at least send e-mail or pages to the on-duty administrator.
  
  
• SQL Server 2000 publishes the same administration Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) used by the SQL Server utilities. These APIs support all of the administration tasks of SQL Server. This allows developers of applications that use SQL Server 2000 as their data store to completely shield users from the administration of SQL Server 2000.