Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 10.50.4042

Processor: minimum x64 Processor: AMD Opteron, AMD Athlon 64, Intel Xeon with Intel EM64T support, Intel Pentium IV with EM64T support RAM: minimum 1 GB (4 GB recommended) Available disk space: minimum 10 GB (50 GB recommended) Operating system: Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (32-bit x86), Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (x64), Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (32-bit x86), Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (x64), Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (32-bit x86), Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (64-bit x64), Windows 7 (32-bit x86), and Windows 7 (64-bit x64)

Graphical query designer Object Explorer to access and manage database objects across servers Scripting of objects and actions in the Database Engine Tools for creating, editing, and managing connections to servers Tools for configuring, managing, and administering instances of the Database Engine, Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services

A clustered index is a type of index where the physical order of the data rows in a table is the same as the indexed order of the rows.

SQL Server uses tempdb to temporarily store intermediate results generated during query processing and to hold temporary objects such as temporary tables and table variables. Since tempdb is re-created every time an instance of SQL Server is started, it is important to monitor its disk space usage regularly.

Full backup: backs up the entire database Differential backup: backs up only the changes made to the database since the last full backup Transaction log backup: backs up only the transaction log data since the last transaction log backup

Improved security and compliance features Better scalability and performance Support for hardware and software partitioning Enhanced data management and integration features Support for social computing capabilities and business intelligence applications

A trigger is a special kind of stored procedure that automatically executes in response to certain events or actions performed on a table or view in a database.

Service Broker is a feature of the Database Engine that allows different applications to communicate asynchronously by exchanging messages. This communication can be across the same database or multiple instances of SQL Server.

AlwaysOn Availability Groups is a high availability and disaster recovery solution introduced in SQL Server 2012. It provides a way to group multiple databases that have relationships, and failover those databases together as a single logical entity.

Data compression is a feature that reduces the size of data stored on disk, resulting in storage space savings.