Microsoft SQL Server has become the database of choice for e-Business and data warehousing initiatives, and it continues to set the standard for performance, ease-of-use, and out-of-the-box functionality. SQL Server is a also the supporting component to the Microsoft.NET strategy. Features of SQL Server include:

XML Support
    XML is becoming the standard in which businesses communicate and share information. SQL Server provides extensive XML support. XML support is easy to setup and access. Once you are up and running with XML, you can store XML inside a table, query the XML data through Transact-SQL statements, and even join XML data to relational data through a SQL statement.

Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence (BI)
    Microsoft continues to build out its BI offering through SQL Server and its Analysis Services. Analysis Services provides OLAP analysis over the Web through accessing and linking cubes via the Internet. Additionally, SQL Server includes Data Mining tools and support for Web-related analysis.

Performance and Scalability
    SQL Server continues to produce record-setting performance numbers on the Intel–based platform. SQL Server is the first Microsoft product to enable the data tier to be portioned across multiple servers. This is accomplished through distributed partitioned views, which enables the workload to be distributed across multiple servers. Distributed partitioned views are a key component of Microsoft's scale-up-and-out strategy.

     Also, SQL Server provides other performance enhancements such as DBCC, indexed views, and index reorganization. DBCC operations can now take advantage of multiple processors (Enterprise Edition only). Indexed views are a big plus for data warehousing. Furthermore, index reorganization can now take place with a minimal performance impact.