Before beginning to work with Microsoft SQL Server in either a development or an administration role, it is important to understand the scope of the SQL Server platform. In particular, it is useful to understand that SQL Server is not just a database engine—it is a complete platform for managing enterprise data.SQL Server provides a strong data platform for all sizes of organizations, in addition to a comprehensive set of tools to make development easier, and more robust.

In a relational database management system (RDBMS), user and system data is stored in tables. Each table consists of a set of rows that describe entities and a set of columns that hold the attributes of an entity. For example, a Customer table might have columns such as CustomerName and CreditLimit, and a row for each customer. In Microsoft SQL Server data management software tables are contained within schemas that are very similar in concept to folders that contain files in the operating system. Designing tables is one of the most important tasks that a database developer undertakes, because incorrect table design leads to the inability to query the data efficiently.After an appropriate design has been created, it is important to know how to correctly implement the design.

The physical design of a database can have a significant impact on the ability of the database to meet the storage and performance requirements set out by the stakeholders. Designing a physical database implementation includes planning the file groups, how to use partitioning to manage large tables, and using compression to improve storage and performance. Temporal tables are a new feature in SQL Server and offer a straightforward solution to collecting changes to your data.

The quality of data in your database largely determines the usefulness and effectiveness of applications that rely on it—the success or failure of an organization or a business venture could depend on it. Ensuring data integrity is a critical step in maintaining high-quality data.You should enforce data integrity at all levels of an application from first entry or collection through storage. Microsoft SQL Server data management software provides a range of features to simplify the job.

An index is a collection of pages associated with a table. Indexes are used to improve the performance of queries or enforce uniqueness. Before learning to implement indexes, it is helpful to understand how they work, how effective different data types are when used within indexes, and how indexes can be constructed from multiple columns. This module discusses table structures that do not have indexes, and the different index types available in Microsoft SQL Server.

Indexes play an important role in enabling SQL Server to retrieve data from a database quickly and efficiently. This module discusses advanced index topics including covering indexes, the INCLUDE clause, query hints, padding and fill factor, statistics, using DMOs, the Database Tuning Advisor, and Query Store.

Introduced in Microsoft SQL Server 2012, columnstore indexes are used in large data warehouse solutions by many organizations. This module highlights the benefits of using these indexes on large datasets; the improvements made to columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2016; and the considerations needed to use columnstore indexes effectively in your solutions.

This module describes the design and implementation of views. A view is a special type of query—one that is stored and can be used in other queries—just like a table. With a view, only the query definition is stored on disk; not the result set. The only exception to this is indexed views, when the result set is also stored on disk, just like a table.Views simplify the design of a database by providing a layer of abstraction, and hiding the complexity of table joins. Views are also a way of securing your data by giving users permissions to use a view, without giving them permissions to the underlying objects. This means data can be kept private, and can only be viewed by appropriate users.

This module describes the design and implementation of stored procedures.

Functions are routines that you use to encapsulate frequently performed logic. Rather than having to repeat the function logic in many places, code can call the function. This makes code more maintainable, and easier to debug.In this module, you will learn to design and implement user-defined functions (UDFs) that enforce business rules or data consistency. You will also learn how to modify and maintain existing functions.

Data Manipulation Language (DML) triggers are powerful tools that you can use to enforce domain, entity, referential data integrity and business logic. The enforcement of integrity helps you to build reliable applications. In this module, you will learn what DML triggers are, how they enforce data integrity, the different types of trigger that are available to you, and how to define them in your database.

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 data management software introduced in-memory online transaction processing (OLTP) functionality features to improve the performance of OLTP workloads. SQL Server adds several enhancements, such as the ability to alter a memory-optimized table without recreating it. Memory-optimized tables are primarily stored in memory, which provides the improved performance by reducing hard disk access.Natively compiled stored procedures further improve performance over traditional interpreted Transact-SQL.

As a SQL Server professional, you are likely to be asked to create databases that meet business needs. Most requirements can be met using Transact-SQL. However, occasionally you may need additional capabilities that can only be met by using common language runtime (CLR) code.As functionality is added to SQL Server with each new release, the necessity to use managed code decreases. However, there are times when you might need to create aggregates, stored procedures, triggers, user-defined functions, or user-defined types. You can use any .NET Framework language to develop these objects.In this module, you will learn how to use CLR managed code to create user-defined database objects for SQL Server.

XML provides rules for encoding documents in a machine-readable form. It has become a widely adopted standard for representing data structures, rather than sending unstructured documents. Servers that are running Microsoft SQL Server data management software often need to use XML to interchange data with other systems; many SQL Server tools provide an XML-based interface. SQL Server offers extensive handling of XML, both for storage and querying. This module introduces XML, shows how to store XML data within SQL Server, and shows how to query the XML data. The ability to query XML data directly avoids the need to extract data into a relational format before executing Structured Query Language (SQL) queries. To effectively process XML, you need to be able to query XML data in several ways: returning existing relational data as XML, and querying data that is already XML.

This module describes spatial data and how this data can be implemented within SQL Server.

Traditionally, databases have been used to store information in the form of simple values—such as integers, dates, and strings—that contrast with more complex data formats, such as documents, spreadsheets, image files, and video files. As the systems that databases support have become more complex, administrators have found it necessary to integrate this more complex file data with the structured data in database tables. For example, in a product database, it can be helpful to associate a product record with the service manual or instructional videos for that product. SQL Server provides several ways to integrate these files—that are often known as Binary Large Objects (BLOBs)—and enable their content to be indexed and included in search results. In this module, you will learn how to design and optimize a database that includes BLOBs.

This module explains how to name, declare, assign values to, and use variables. It also describes how to store data in an array. Concurrency control is a critical feature of multiuser database systems; it allows data to remain consistent when many users are modifying data at the same time. This module covers the implementation of concurrency in Microsoft SQL Server. You will learn about how SQL Server implements concurrency controls, and the different ways you can configure and work with concurrency settings.

This module explains how to name, declare, assign values to, and use variables. It also describes how to store data in an array. This module looks at how to measure and monitor the performance of your SQL Server databases. The first two lessons look at SQL Server Extended Events, a flexible, lightweight event-handling system built into the Microsoft SQL Server Database Engine. These lessons focus on the architectural concepts, troubleshooting strategies and usage scenarios.