Exploring, Creating, and Recovering Databases

Summary

This chapter focused heavily on how to explore, create, and recover databases. In the area of exploring databases, the chapter covered system catalog views and selected stored procedures. sys.databases was the main catalog view covered in the chapter, but sys.tables and sys.columns were also given some attention. The system-stored procedures for learning about and manipulating databases covered here included sp_helpdb and sp_dboption. The review of creating databases focused on programmatic approaches; see Chapter 2 for a demonstration of graphical techniques for creating databases. This chapter illustrated how to create and manipulate databases programmatically with Express SSMS. You were also able to take a close look at the CREATE DATABASE statement from multiple perspectives, including creating a database from scratch as well as attaching data and log files copied from databases that already exist. The chapter’s final major section drilled down on backing up and restoring databases. You learned core concepts and saw specific examples that illustrated how to build backup and restore solutions with the BACKUP DATABASE and RESTORE DATABASE statements.