xvi Introduction
How Is This Book Organized?
SQL Server 2012, like its predecessors, is more than a database engine. It is a collection of
components you can implement either separately or as a group to form a scalable, cloud-ready
information platform. In broad terms, this cloud-ready information platform consists of two
categories: those that help you manage data and those that help you deliver business intelligence (BI).
Accordingly, we divided this book into two parts to focus on the new capabilities for each of these
areas.
Part 1, “Database Administration,” is written with the database administrator (DBA) in mind and
introduces readers to the numerous innovations in SQL Server 2012. Chapter 1, “SQL Server 2012
Editions and Engine Enhancements,” discusses the key enhancements afliated with availability, scal-
ability, performance, manageability, security, and programmability. It then outlines the different SQL
Server 2012 editions, hardware and software requirements and installation, upgrade, and migration
strategies available. In Chapter 2, “High-Availability and Disaster-Recovery Enhancements” readers
learn about the new AlwaysOn features in SQL Server 2012—specically, AlwaysOn Availability Groups
and how they can be used to achieve a high level of condence in your data and related capabilities.
Chapter 3, “Performance and Scalability,” introduces a new index type called columnstore and explains
how it can be leveraged to signicantly accelerate data-warehousing workloads and other queries
that are similar in nature. Chapter 4, “Security Enhancements,” covers the new security enhancements
associated with the product, such as security manageability improvements and audit and authenti-
cation enhancements. Finally, Chapter 5, “Programmability and Beyond-Relational Enhancements,”
discusses the new beyond-relational enhancements positively impacting unstructured data, including
renements to existing technology features such as full-text search, spatial data, and FILESTREAM, as
well as brand new capabilities like FileTables and statistical semantic search.
Part 2, “Business Intelligence Development,” is written for readers who need to understand how
SQL Server 2012 can help them more easily perform data integration, data quality improvements,
master data management, data analysis, and reporting tasks. Chapter 6, “Integration Services,”
explores the comprehensive changes in this release affecting development, deployment, and admin-
istration of Integration Services packages. In Chapter 7, “Data Quality Services,” readers learn about
the newest BI component available in SQL Server 2012 for centralizing data-quality activities, includ-
ing how to store data-quality rules in a knowledge base and how to automate the discovery of rules.
Chapter 8, “Master Data Services,” reviews the improved interface of this feature that simplies the
implementation, workows, and administration of master data management. Chapter 9, “Analysis
Services and PowerPivot,” introduces the new tabular server mode, shows how to develop tabular
models, and describes enhancements to the Analysis Services platform and PowerPivot for Excel
capabilities. Last, Chapter 10, “Reporting Services,” covers the improvements in SharePoint integration
and details the self-service capabilities available with the new ad hoc reporting tool, Power View.