11. SQL Service Broker
The SQL Service Broker is a new subsystem that adds asynchronous queuing support to Yukon. Asynchronous queuing is present in many other highly scalable applications, such as the OSs' I/O subsystems, Web servers, and even the internal operations of the SQL Server database engine.
Asynchronous queuing is an important factor for scalability because it lets a program respond to more requests than the platform might be able to physically handle. For example, if 10,000 users simultaneously request resources from a Web server that doesn't have asynchronous queuing, the Web server would be overwhelmed as it attempted to launch threads to handle all the incoming requests. When a Web server has asynchronous queuing, the server captures all requests in a queue. Instead of being overwhelmed, the Web server processes entries from the queue at its maximum level of efficiency. With asynchronous queuing, the Web server can effectively handle a far greater number of user connections than would otherwise be possible. The SQL Service Broker lets you build this same type of asynchronous scalability into database applications.
12. Notification Services
Originally introduced as a Web release for SQL Server 2000, Notification Services is one of the base subsystems in Yukon. Notification Services is a programming framework that lets you build applications that send notifications to a variety of devices in response to events that a developer defines in the system. Like many of the other new features in Yukon, Microsoft used managed .NET code to build Notification Services.
Notification Services applications consist of subscribers, events, subscriptions, and notifications. Subscribers are end users or applications that need to be notified of given events. An event is a change in a specific piece of information in which the subscriber is interested. Subscriptions define the information that will be sent to the subscribers, and a notification is the message that the subscriber receives when the event occurs.
13. Reporting Services
Reporting Services fills the last big hole—the inability to generate reports for the database—present in earlier releases of SQL Server. Out of the box, you can immediately use Yukon's Reporting Services to create reports based on relational data from SQL Server and other OLE DB–compliant databases or create reports based on OLAP cubes.
Reporting Services addresses all aspects of the reporting process, from design through deployment and delivery. For report design, it provides a graphical report builder with an integrated graphical query builder. Underneath the covers, the graphical report builder generates a Report Design Language (RDL) document. Based on XML, RDL is Microsoft's new report-definition language. For deployment, Reporting Services provides the Web-based Report Manager, which uploads reports to the server. After deployment, Reporting Services stores the reports' definitions in a SQL Server database. Report Manager also handles the delivery of reports. You can set rights that govern who can run a given report. You can also set options that determine the reports' format and subscription model.
Yukon Offers Even More Gold Nuggets
While Yukon has been a long time coming, Microsoft has added a significant array of new features. In addition to the major features I just described, Yukon offers many other gold nuggets, including 8-way clustering support, support for Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA), a new schema-based security model, a built-in HTTP server, the ability to expose stored procedures as Web services, and the ability to work with SQL Server 2000 Windows CE Edition databases. As you can see, Microsoft is delivering a gold mine of new features in Yukon.
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