Relational Database Engine Architecture

The server is the component of Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 that receives SQL statements from clients and performs all the actions necessary to complete the statements. This section discusses:

• An overview of the components that make up the server.
  
  
• How the server compiles each batch of SQL statements into an execution plan that tells the server how to process the statement.
  
  
• How the server manages Microsoft Windows® resources such as memory, threads, and tasks.
  
  
• How the server determines what part of a distributed query references a linked server and what request to transmit to the server to obtain the needed data.
  
  
• How the server transmits remote stored procedure calls to remote servers.
  
  
• How the server manages concurrency and transaction issues.
  
  
• How the server implements server cursors.
  
  
• The features that allow SQL Server to scale from small laptop computers to large servers that provide the primary data storage for large enterprises.
  
  
• How the SQL Mail component integrates SQL Server with e-mail servers to allow the server to send e-mail and pages when specified events occur.