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If you're new to managing Microsoft SQL Server 2005 you might feel somewhat lost in a world of tables, indexes, stored procedures, queries, and database backup. In this Essential Guide, I'll show you the tools you need to manage a SQL Server 2005 system, SQL Server security essentials, and database backup and recovery. With this article under your belt, you'll know enough about SQL Server to perform necessary administrative tasks on a SQL Server 2005 system.
SQL Server Management Tools
SQL Server 2005 provides four primary tools that you can use to manage the server: SQL Server Management Studio, Query Editor, SQL Server Configuration Manager, and SQL Server Surface Area Configuration.
SQL Server Management Studio, which Figure 1 shows, is the primary GUI-based SQL Server management tool. You use SQL Server Management Studio to manage one or multiple SQL Server instances. You start SQL Server Management Studio by selecting Start, All Programs, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, SQL Server Management Studio. You can run it directly from the server system itself, but more typically you'd install the client tools that include SQL Server Management Studio on a management workstation and run it from there.
To use the SQL Server Management Studio, you must first register the server that you want to manage. To register a new SQL Server system, right-click the topmost SQL Server Group node, then select Register from the context menu. Doing so opens the Register Server dialog, which prompts you for the SQL Server name and authentication information, then connects you to an instance of the server. You can use SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Manager to manage both SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2000 systems, and SQL Server 7 systems but not to manage systems running SQL Server 6.5 or earlier.
After you've registered a SQL Server system, you can view a list of all the database objects on that server, as Figure 1 shows. Right-clicking each object typically displays a pop-up menu that contains a list of relevant actions for each object. For instance, right-clicking a Tables object displays a pop-up menu that lets you create a new table, open the table designer, or retrieve rows from the table.
Query Editor is both a management tool and a development tool. You...