Datasheet

inserted. To get only the date out of a datetime data type, you must essentially “fool” the data type by
converting it:
SELECT CONVERT(varchar, GetDate(), 101)
CLR Integration
In SQL Server 2005, you can also create your own data types and stored procedures using CLR (Common
Language Runtime). This allows you to write more complex data types to meet your business needs in
Visual Basic or C#, for example. (We cover the administration aspect of these much more in Chapter 8.)
Editions of SQL Server
With SQL Server 2005, there are numerous editions of the SQL Server product. The features available to
you in each edition vary widely. The editions you can install on your workstation or server also vary
based on the operating system. The editions of SQL Server range from SQL Express on the lowest end to
Enterprise Edition on the highest. The prices of these also vary widely, from free to more than $20,000
per processor.
SQL Express
SQL Express is the free version of SQL Server meant for installation to laptops or desktops to support
distributed applications such as a remote sales force application. You can use this edition to store sales or
inventory data for your disconnected sales force and replicate updated data to them when they become
connected again. SQL Express was called Microsoft Desktop Edition (MSDE) in SQL Server 2000. It is
extremely lightweight and does not occupy much hard drive space. Vendors are free to distribute SQL
Express, and it can be wrapped into your application’s installation as just another component.
SQL Express is not meant to scale past a few users. Key features missing from SQL Express are SQL
Agent and some of the robust management tools. It does ship with a very lightweight tool for managing
the database, but scheduling of backups will have to be done in the Windows scheduler, not SQL Server.
Workgroup and Standard Editions
The Workgroup Edition of SQL Server is the lowest-cost edition of SQL Server editions that you pay for.
It scales minimally up to two processors and 3GB of RAM, but it’s adequate for small and medium-sized
businesses. This edition of SQL Server was initially introduced to compete with lower-end vendors such
as MySQL.
The Standard Edition of SQL Server has been beefed up in SQL Server 2005. It now has high-availability
options that were exclusive to the Enterprise Edition in SQL Server 2000. For example, you can now clus-
ter SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition instances.
Enterprise, Evaluation, and Developer Editions
Enterprise Edition is the best option for SQL Server if you need to use some of the more advanced busi-
ness intelligence features or if the uptime of your database is very important. Although the Standard
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