Corporate Proposal for SQL Server - Research Paper Example

CORPORATE PROPOSAL FOR SQL SERVER Corporate Proposal for SQL Server Affiliation Table of Contents CORPORATE PROPOSAL FOR SQL SERVER 1 Corporate Proposal for SQL Server 1 Overview 3 Proposal for ESL Inc. 4 Background 4 Microsoft SQL Server 4 Microsoft SQL Server 2012 4 Proposed Database Management System 5 Need of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 for ESL Company 6 Installation process 7 System requirements 7 Operating System Requirements 8 Data Security by Microsoft SQL Server 2012 8 Security Management Levels 9 Physical Security 9 Operating System Security 9 Application Level Security 9 Network Level Security 10 Monitoring performance of Microsoft SQL server 2012 10 Recommendation of Backup plan 10 Conclusion 11 References 12 Overview This proposal is being written for ESL Inc., which is a big corporation, but all of its information is stored manually in spreadsheets, manual records while some of it is stored in an access database. Now the data have grown substantially and the company is looking for automating their records and making online accessibility of everything. For this reason the company is looking for some experts who can suggest a comprehensive solution keeping in view all the data storage concerns. They are also in search of an individual who will be able to maintain the system properly while proposing a complete packaged solution of such system. The person will also be able to data mine the data stored and make all that information useful not only for the company but also for the clients. For a large company like ESL Inc., we are recommending Microsoft SQL Server 2012 for storing data and retrieving it whenever it is needed by request through any other software applications. The request is done by the same computer or on a series of computers that are on the same intranet or internet connection. This version was released in 2012 as the last version that supports “Object linking and embedding data base (OLE DB) instead of Open databases connectivity (ODBC)” for native connectivity. Object connecting and embedding database allows different users to access data from different points in a uniform manner. Proposal for ESL Inc. Background Before jumping directly into the topic of Microsoft SQL Server we need to explore the background where SQL stands for Structured Query Language. This is a language designed for having an easy method of communication with a database. SQL commands are designed for giving commands like updating data which is present in the database. In other word we can also define it as a standard language designed for RDBMS (Relational Database Management Systems). The familiar Database Management Systems which are making use of SQL are: Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, Access, Ingres etc. (Mistry & Misner, 2012). Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft has always presented some new ideas into the market and this is one of their latest Relational Database Management System named as Microsoft SQL 2012. The main or primary function of this software is to store data or information on the request of other software applications. There are various additions of Microsoft SQL Server. Its chief query related languages are ANSI SQL and T-SQL. The Structured Query Language (SQL) is used to manage the database server. Time by time Microsoft develop its software or products with greater efficiency and performance. Nowadays the best SQL Server is Microsoft SQL Server 2012, because of its new outstanding features. Therefore, we will be recommending SQL server for ESL Company. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Basically, the Microsoft Server 2012 is a Database Management System which is Relational Database Management System, which is considered the venture atmosphere. SQL Server 2012 was released on April 2012; at the start it becomes famous among professionals. This language consists of a series of extensions which are developed keeping in view standard interactive features of the programming language. Additionally, it consists of a set of programming extensions to develop the SQL (Structured Query Language) to a standard interactive and programming language for performing a wide variety of operations on a database such as accessing and updating information (Jorgensen, Segarra, LeBlanc, Chinchilla, & Nelson, 2012). Proposed Database Management System SQL Server 2012 allows you to use relational database management system instead of spreadsheet or any other program for data storage. This database management system provides an excellent support to its customers for creating big data and mission-critical database solutions by providing in-memory technology through OLTP (online transaction processing), high-performance, business intelligence, data warehousing, and a wide variety of analytics workloads. In fact, the customers do not need to buy expensive tools to attain similar functionality. Relational Database means a set of any type of collective data; analyze the data and the way it is organized. It may be the record of a company’s account, number of production of goods, customer record, and sales purchase record in soft form, which can be easily sorted, searched and updated. Relational Database also provides a facility to run applications that contain several databases. The SQL Server is a management related application which not only holds data, but also includes some tools that can be utilized for operating, arranging and managing data. At the time of installing SQL Server, numerous choices are present which includes Management Interface, Analysis tools, Data Import Export application and Report Writing Tools. Microsoft SQL Server is a database management scheme which is free and provides reliable storage of data for light weight websites and desktop applications. Microsoft SQL Server has been designed for customers who have their data and application on the cloud platform and various other platforms. OLE DB can full fill this requirement of the de-facto regular client connectivity API for native client applications (Lam, 2011). SQL server 2012 introduces support for cross cluster migration for Always ON availability groups. Improved failure detection is introduced in the Microsoft SQL system 2012. The main user of the SQL system can employ a flexible failover policy. Indirect checkpoints initiate new check pointing algorithm for the Database Engine. This logarithm provides an accurate guarantee for recovering data which have crashed or is lost due to failover (msdn.microsoft.com, 2013). Need of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 for ESL Company Microsoft SQL Server is a basic need of every company, there is always a risk of loss data because of less security. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 offering a lot of new features and capabilities for its users that make it easy to store and secure company data, and easily update the data without any burden. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 overcomes the previous version’s issue, and the Microsoft Company makes it better according to user’s needs. Some of the great features are mentioned below: Column store indexes Series Objects Contained Database Error Handling User Defined Role Windows Server Core Support Tabular Model (SSAS) Power View DQS Data Quality Services Always On These all feature are very useful for storing, uploading, and managing data in a database. Installation process The installation process can be completed by following the two different ways: The first process is the attendance installation. This is preferred as an interactive guide which helps in the installation process. The consent of the user is asked at each step and the information is obtained which requires completing the installation. This method also displays the consent and the management of the terms of the SQL server (Bruchez, 2012). The second installation process is the unattended installation. This is done with the help of a windows command line up system. This method at times provides a cooperative user interface to direct towards the steps of installation. In this method, a parameter is chosen to help with the installation process where the acceptance of the licensing conditions is recorded (microsoft.com, 2015). System requirements Given below is the system requirements for the Microsoft SQL Server: The Microsoft SQL system can be easily installed on almost all the versions of a Windows operating system including MS Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2, Windows Vista Service Pack 2, MS Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2. For 64-bit systems, the requirement for the processor is 2.0 GHz or a faster processor. The RAM size should be a minimum of 512 MB of RAM, but the recommended size is 2GB. The 32-bit systems along with Intel or well-matched 1GHz or faster processor. The hard disk free space should be available in 2.2 GB but the recommended size is 6.0GB. A DVD drive and a reliable internet connection are required as well for the installation process (Ross, 2012). Operating System Requirements The drive should be formatted to NTFS file system. It is compulsory to unzip the SQL server files if needed, never open direct from the compressed file. Turn on the Windows Management Instrumentation services. Setting the firewall to allow SQL Server access. 6.0 GB disk free space is required to install SQL Server. NET Framework 3.5 or greater must be installed in the system. PowerShell 2.0 has required for the installation of Microsoft SQL Server 2012. Service Pack 1 is required for installation. 2 GB or Ram memory is required. 2.0 GHz or faster processor is required. Data Security by Microsoft SQL Server 2012 The Microsoft SQL server 2012 provides a user friendly interface for the software applications of the company along with data security measures that adhere to the security and compliance policy. This application provides reliable security to database applications on the web. It provides overlapping layers of security. This feature of overlapping layer forms a thick wall for the attackers which bring an end to the attack on the valuable data of a company. Microsoft SQL server 2012 provides a security architecture that can be employed to make such web applications by the administrators and the developers to make such web which are secured and at the same time are able to combat any attack or threat to the secured information. (Lam, 2011) It is important for ESL Inc. to address the security requirement for SQL server at the time of integration in the system. If this is considered later and after the installation process, it may not help the company in mitigating the potential damage whenever vulnerability is found in the security of the system. Security Management Levels SQL Server provides security at various levels to the administrator which ranges from physical to application level. Physical Security Regarding physical security it provides limited accessibility to the physical server and hardware constituents. Additionally, it also provides networking schemes which unite clients to the database servers, and the binary records that are utilized for processing database requirements. Operating System Security Microsoft SQL Server 2012 is designed with all latest features which allow the Operating system to download service packs and afterwards upgrade it accordingly. The SQL server utilizes the OS files for process and for storing data. The best practices are required to be followed for ensuring complete file security which afterwards restricts access to the secured files (msdn.microsoft.com, 2013). Application Level Security Microsoft SQL Server 2012 provides greater security at the application level. It helps to be secure during link to one or more server over a network. The structures of client SQL servers allow managing other multiple servers on a network. There are different types of applications which include SQL Server client, like: OLE DB DB-Library clients ODBC Network Level Security A network protocol is compulsory to link the SQL Server. There are no inner networks to bypass the network. If Windows Firewall is not enabled on the server machine at the time of SQL Server installation a warning message will appear. If the client or operating system support, use the extended protection in Microsoft SQL Server 2012 (Misner, 2013). Monitoring performance of Microsoft SQL server 2012 Microsoft has provided a variety of tools that can be used in monitoring the performance of the database and for the tuning of the database design through the Microsoft SQL server 2012 (msdn.microsoft.com, 2015). SQL Server profiler is employed to track the engine process event. The activities include, dead lock, fatal errors or login activity. SQL server distributed replay tool provides the use of multiple computers to replay data. The Monitor resource usage provides tracking of the resources that are being used and helps in monitoring of the performance of the server and its activity using predefined objects. Graphically the information is displayed with the help of an open activity monitor. The information provided is about processes running on an instance of SQL Server, locks, blocked processer and the different activities by the users (Misner, 2013). Recommendation of Backup plan Restore and backup is very compulsory points for any company. Nobody knows when a problem comes due to user error, hardware failures, and natural disaster. In this case everybody wishes to go back to the time when everything is fine. So, backup strategies should be planned before time. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 overcomes this issue with a very easy, reliable and automated features. Now with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 any firm can create a backup of their database easily. In SQL Server 2012 you can create easily scheduled Database backup using maintenance plan. A back plan is proposed if problem like hardware errors that may include disk or network related errors. Other problems that can occur are the excessive blocking by an incorrect design database or the application development errors. The backup plan requires that a combination of Microsoft ISQ server 2012 along with Microsoft windows tools be used. The integration of these two programs will help in isolating the problems that can take place during the usage of the SQL system. It is of great importance that the IT department at ESL Inc. should carefully select the problem that is harming the overall performance. The problem can be dealt with the help of a designated tool to be resolved. Specific tools should be assigned to specific problems when they occur. Conclusion Security is an important part of any application. To execute security for SQL Server 2012 in a manner that is not inclined to mistakes, security structure must be simple to implement. The default configuration is best of security configuration. In this proposal, we describe the importance and needs of Microsoft SQL Server 2012. Every company relates to managing their data in the form of hard or soft copy, and it is essential to be sure about the security of data or to be ensured about the database safety. Because there is always a risk of loss data, so the Microsoft provide the best way for clients to keep secure or managing their data. ESL Inc. is a large company which has grown over time with internal resources and with a large clientele. In our present times, it is important for the companies to make sure that the valuable data related to the internal procedures of the company and the information of the customers is stored in a systematic way along with proper measures of security are provided to the data. The Microsoft SQL server 2012 is a server that not only stored the data in the most efficient way but at the same time it provides the security that is needed to save the data from malicious attacks. There are many benefits of the Microsoft SQL server 2012 which it can provide to ESL Inc. These include data integrity which is ensured whenever a new set of data is stored, deleted or upgraded in the system. The data transmission over the network by the management at ESL Inc. can be easily done with a high speed with the use of SQL server 2012. This can ultimately increase the overall performance of the company as the sharing of data will be quick and without any hassle. I strongly propose, the use of Microsoft SQL server 2012 to ESL Inc. as the main benefits of SQL Server are improved reliability, secured data with better performance, and increased scalability. References Bruchez, R. (2012). Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Security Cookbook (Google eBook). Packt Publishing Ltd. Jorgensen, A., Segarra, J., LeBlanc, P., Chinchilla, J., & Nelson, A. (2012). Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Bible (Google eBook). John Wiley & Sons. Lam, R. (2011). Microsoft is Aligning with ODBC for Native Relational Data Access - FAQ. Microsoft SQL server. microsoft.com. (2015). Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 Express. Misner, S. (2013). Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services . Pearson Education. Mistry, R., & Misner, S. (2012). Introducing Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012. OReilly Media, Inc. msdn.microsoft.com. (2013). Availability Enhancements (Database Engine). msdn.microsoft.com. (2015). Performing and Moitoring Tools. Ross. (2012). Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Management and Administration. Sams Publishing. Read More