SQL Server 2005 Top 10 Features for Database Administration

Feature	Description
Database Mirroring	Extend log shipping capabilities with the database mirroring solution. You will be able to use database mirroring to enhance availability of your SQL Server systems by setting up automatic failover to a standby server.
Online Restore	With SQL Server 2005, database administrators are able to perform a restore operation while an instance of SQL Server is running. Online restore improves the availability of SQL Server because only the data being restored is unavailable; the rest of the database remains online and available.
Online Indexing Operations	The online index option allows concurrent modifications (updates, deletes, and inserts) to the underlying table or clustered index data and any associated indexes during index data definition language (DDL) execution. For example, while a clustered index is being rebuilt, you can continue to make updates to the underlying data and perform queries against the data.
Fast Recovery	A new faster recovery option improves availability of SQL Server databases. Administrators can reconnect to a recovering database after the transaction log has been rolled forward.
Standards-based Information Access	Any object, data source, or business intelligence component can be exposed using standards-based protocols such as SOAP and HTTP—eliminating the need for a middle-tier listener, such as IIS, to access a Web services interface that is exposed by SQL Server 2005.
SQL Server Management Studio	SQL Server 2005 includes SQL Server Management Studio, a new integrated suite of management tools with the functionality to develop, deploy, and troubleshoot SQL Server databases, as well as enhancements to previous functionality.
Dedicated Administrator Connection	SQL Server 2005 provides a dedicated administrator connection that administrators can use to access a running server even if the server is locked or otherwise unavailable. This capability enables administrators to troubleshoot problems on a server by executing diagnostic functions or Transact-SQL statements.
Snapshot Isolation	Snapshot Isolation (SI) level is provided at the database level. With SI, users can access the last committed row using a transitionally consistent view of the database. This capability provides greater scalability.
Data Partitioning	Data partitioning is enhanced with native table and index partitioning that enables efficient manageability of large tables and indexes.
Replication Enhancements	For distributed databases, SQL Server 2005 provides comprehensive schema change (DDL) replication, next-generation monitoring capabilities, built in replication from Oracle to SQL Server, merge replication over https, and significant merge replication scalability and performance improvements. Additionally, the peer-to-peer transactional replication feature improves support for data scale out using replication.

SQL Server 2005 Top 10 Features for Development

Feature	Description
Hosted CommonLanguage Runtime	With SQL Server 2005 developers can create database objects using familiar languages such as Microsoft Visual C# .NET and Microsoft Visual Basic .NET. Developers can also create two new objects—user-defined types and aggregates.
Native XML Support	Native XML data can be stored, queried, and indexed in a SQL Server database—allowing developers to build new classes of connected applications around Web services and across any platform or device.
ADO.NET version 2.0	From new support for SQL Types to Multiple Active Result Sets (MARS), ADO.NET in SQL Server 2005 evolves dataset access and manipulation to achieve greater scalability and flexibility.
Security Enhancements	The security model in SQL Server 2005 separate users from objects, provides fine-grain access, and enables greater control of data access. Additionally, all system tables are implemented as views, providing more control over database system objects.
Transact-SQL Enhancements	SQL Server 2005 provides new language capabilities for developing scalable database applications. These enhancements include error handling, recursive query capabilities, relational operator PIVOT, APPLY, ROW_NUMBER and other row ranking functions, and more.
Reliable Messaging for Asynchronous Applications	Service Broker is a robust messaging infrastructure that provides reliable transactional delivery of critical messages between servers—with the scalable high-performance that is expected with asynchronous queuing.
Visual Studio Integration	Tight integration with Microsoft Visual Studio and the .NET Framework streamlines development and debugging of data-driven applications. Developers can build database objects, such as stored procedures, using any .NET language and can seamlessly debug across .NET and Transact-SQL (TSQL) languages.
Web Services	With SQL Server 2005 developers can develop Web services in the database tier, making SQL Server a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) listener and providing a new type of data access capability for Web services-centric applications.
Embedded Reports	Use client-side reporting controls to embed real-time reports into an application at design time.
Full-Text Search Enhancements	SQL Server 2005 supports rich, full-text search applications. Cataloging capabilities provide greater flexibility over what is cataloged. Query performance and scalability have been improved dramatically, and new management tools provide greater insight into the full-text implementation.