SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS) developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is a software product that stores and retrieves data as requested by other software applications, which may run either on the same computer or on another computer across a network, including the Internet. SQL Server is built on top of SQL, a standard programming language for interacting with relational databases. It works exclusively on the Windows environment for more than 20 years, but in 2016, Microsoft made it available on Linux. SQL Server is known as a “Relational Database” Management System, where data is stored in tables in a similar way to rows and columns in a spreadsheet. SQL Server is tied to Transact-SQL, or T-SQL, which is Microsoft’s implementation of SQL that adds a set of proprietary programming constructs.
SQL Server has a core service called the Database Engine, which is responsible for storing, processing, and securing data. It provides controlled access and transaction processing to meet the requirements of the most demanding data consuming applications within an enterprise. SQL Server also includes an assortment of add-on services, such as SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), SQL Server Data Quality Services, and SQL Server Master Data Services.
SQL Server is used in corporate IT environments from transaction processing to business intelligence to analytics. It competes primarily against Oracle database and IBMs db2 in the relational database management system field. SQL Server provides both data management and business intelligence (BI) tools and services together with SQL Server.
