Microsoft's SQL Server is a relational database management system
that initially was targeted at small and medium sized businesses.
Today, many large corporation are using it for their enterprise information
needs. The first version of SQL Server was launched in 1989.
The current version of this DBMS is Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (alias
Yukon). In addition to providing database management functionality,
the toolset includes ETL (extra, transform, load) functionality for data
warehousing applications and an OLAP tool (Online Analytics).
The SQL Server 2005 DBMS provides a secure, reliable, scalable, highly
available relational database engine with improved performance and support
for structured and unstructured (XML) data.
A light version of SQL Server called SQL Server 2005 Express Edition is
also available.
