This lesson aims to give you an overview of what SQL Server is and the different flavors of SQL Server you may encounter. We will also cover the different components of SQL Server that are included in the product.

In order to manage all your SQL Servers, you first must find them. In this lesson, we will look at different places where you might find SQL Server in your environment. The goal is to provide you with more information about how SQL Server is used so that you can recognize situations where SQL Servers may be in use.

You will work with many tools in the process of managing SQL Servers, but none more so than the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). The goal of this lesson will be to orient you with SSMS and show you how it is used.

Continuing our look at tools, this lesson will introduce you to the Configuration Manager and how it is used to manage the settings of the various services.

A fantastic tool for analysis and troubleshooting is the Profiler. In this brief introduction we will show you the basics of Profiler and make sure you know how to get around with the tool.

If you’re developing database projects such as Integration Services packages or Reporting Services repots, you will use the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS). This lesson will help you get familiar with the tool.

This lesson serves as the first of two lessons that will cover relational database basics. It is easier to manage SQL Server if you have at least a passing understanding of what databases are and how they are structured. In this lesson, we will focus on the foundation of databases, namely tables.

This lesson builds on the preceding by extending our discussion of relational databases. We will look at how the data in tables is joined through the concept of relationships.

This lesson provides you with some detail as to how SQL Server manages databases. We will look at the different files that make up a database and how they are managed.

Crucial to the operation of SQL Server and therefore crucial to your knowledge is the transaction log. This lesson aims to explain the workings of the transaction log and to give you an idea of how recovery models affect its use.

System databases are used by SQL Server to keep all its internal processes up and running. We will look at each system database and how each contributes to the function of SQL Server as a whole.

Often SQL Server is installed on a server with a few other applications running. In this lesson, we will look at the settings that control how SQL Server interacts with the server’s CPUs.

Just as important as the CPUs, memory also plays an enormous role for SQL Server. This lesson will show you the available memory settings and explain why you might need to make changes.

A crucial task when working with SQL Server is backing up the databases. This lesson will show you what you need to know to make sure you can backup your databases and protect yourself from data loss.

This lesson will be an introduction to SQL Server jobs. We will look specifically at how you can schedule routine maintenance such as backups in order to reduce the amount of manual work you need to put into managing SQL Server.

What good is backing up if you can’t restore your database in the event of a loss? This lesson will provide you with the information necessary to perform a database restore.

Restoring System databases is a little different than restoring user databases. In this lesson we will look at those differences and walk through the process of restoring system databases.\

Your first line of security is the login. This lesson will explain logins and show you how to create them and manage the permissions assigned to each login.

Users are separate from logins and control the access granted into individual databases. In this lesson, we will look at what users are and how they are managed.

Database roles are used to manage groups of users and assign the users permissions to do things in a database. This lesson aims to arm you with the information you need to manage database roles or even create your own.

This lesson will focus on a discussion of ownership chaining. This is an important concept in security and without fully understanding it, you may be handing out more permissions than your users need. We will talk specifically about what ownership changing is and look at some real-world examples.

This will be the first lesson where we look at Transact SQL or T-SQL. T-SQL is the language used to work with SQL Server data and objects. In this lesson, we look at Data Manipulation Language (DML), which is used to work with the data being stored in your database.

In order to create and modify objects in databases such as tables or views, you use Data Definition Language (DDL). In this lesson, we will look at the basics of DDL and how it is used.

In addition to structures such as tables, databases are also made up of programming structures that allow you to run T-SQL code. The most common of these structures are stored procedures. In this lesson, we will look at what stored procedures are, how they are created, and how you set up security on them.

This lesson will cover functions, another programming option in SQL Server databases.

This lesson will cover views. Views provide access to data without the need to access a table directly. We will look at what you need to know to use views effectively.

Triggers allow you to have bits of T-SQL run automatically in response to an event such as data being inserted into a table. This lesson will cover the different types of triggers and how you can use them in your databases.

With the release of SQL Server 2005, we were given the ability to use CLR code structures within SQL Server. This lesson will show you how this is accomplished and how you can make stored procedures, functions, or types in SQL Server that reference CLR code.

Indexing is a huge topic in the world of SQL Server. This lesson will provide you with the basics of what indexes are how SQL Server uses them to find data.

This lesson will build on the last by providing you with what you need to know about the different types of indexes. In addition, we will look at how each type of index is implemented.

This final indexing lesson will discuss a relatively new feature of SQL Server: included columns in indexes. We will look at what they are and how they are implemented in SQL Server.

We have looked at several security concepts and this lesson will bring these concepts together to help you make a real-world decision. We will look at the most common options for allowing applications access to SQL Server and the pros and cons of each.

This final lesson will be a discussion on creating abstraction layers. Abstraction layers have several uses and we will examine each as well as take a look at the problems that can arise when you don’t have an abstraction layer.