Querying Databases in SQL Server 2005
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This hands-on tutorial should help you in understanding the interface available for querying the SQL Server 2005 databases. Some of the major features will be discussed as related to their use rather than going into a lot of details. Querying the database is one of the most basic activities that is routinely and frequently performed.
SQL Server 2000
In SQL Server 2000, the Query Analyzer provided excellent support for all database-related programming. However, the Query Analyzer was separate from the Enterprise Manager. Further, the Enterprise Manager had its own querying interface common to many other Microsoft products like Visual Interdev, VS 2003, and so on. Also, SQL queries could be run from the command line in the DOS screen using ISQL and OSQL utilities, although ISQL was on its way out. SQL Server 2005 shows excellent integration of all these different features into one master dashboard, the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio as seen in Fig.1. Also, while Query Analyzer always demanded a login by the machine owner, with Windows Login, the Enterprise Manager generally did not.
Fig.1
SQL Server 2005
In SQL server 2005, the Query Analyzer and Enterprise Manager are integrated in the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (which will be called the Studio in this tutorial). When you connect to the Server, you will be connecting to both utilities. The OSQL is still retained in the Studio, but will not be supported in future versions; it is included in this version for backward compatibility only. The recommended utility to use is SQLCMD, which can be run in the Studio. You can run SQLCMD without accessing the DOS screen; in this case it uses a Microsoft .NET SQLClient. SQLCMD can also be run side by side with OSQL in the command line when it uses an OleDb driver.
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