You can control the actions SQL Server 2000 takes when you attempt to delete or update a key to which existing foreign keys point. This is controlled by the new ON DELETE and ON UPDATE clauses in the REFERENCES clauses of the CREATE TABLE and ALTER TABLE statements. For more information, see Constraints.

Collation Enhancements

SQL Server 2000 replaces code pages and sort orders with collations. SQL Server 2000 includes support for most collations supported in earlier versions of SQL Server, and introduces a new set of collations based on Windows collations. You can now specify collations at the database level or at the column level. Previously, code pages and sort orders could only be specified at the server level and applied to all databases on a server. For more information, see Collations.

Full-text Search Enhancements

FULL-TEXT Search now includes change tracking and image filtering. Change tracking maintains a log of all changes to the full-text indexed data. You can update the full-text index with these changes by flushing the log manually, on a schedule, or as they occur, using the auto-propagation option. Image filtering allows you to index and query documents stored in image columns. The type of the document is provided by the user in a column that contains the filename extension the document would have had were it stored as a file in the file system. Using this information, full-text search is able to load the appropriate document filter to extract textual information for indexing. For more information, see Full-text Search.

Multiple Instances of SQL Server

SQL Server 2000 supports running multiple instances of SQL server on the same computer. Each computer can run one instance of SQL Server version 6.5 or 7.0, along with one or more instances of SQL Server 2000. Each instance has its own set of system and user databases. Applications can connect to each instance on a computer in much the same way as they connect to instances of SQL Servers running on different computers. For more information, see Multiple Instances of SQL Server.

Index Enhancements

You can now create indexes on computed columns. You can specify whether indexes are built in either ascending or descending order, and whether the database engine should use parallel scanning and sorting during index creation. For more information, see Table Indexes.

Failover Clustering Enhancements

The administration of failover clusters has been greatly improved to make it very easy to install, configure, and maintain a SQL Server 2000 failover cluster. Additional enhancements include the ability to failover and failback to or from any node in a SQL Server 2000 cluster, the ability to add or remove a node from the cluster through SQL Server 2000 Setup, and the ability to reinstall or rebuild a cluster instance on any node in the cluster without affecting the other cluster node instances. For more information, see Failover Clustering Architecture.

Net-Library Enhancements

The SQL Server 2000 Net-Libraries have been rewritten to virtually eliminate the need to administer Net-Library configurations on client computers when connecting SQL Server 2000 clients to SQL Server 2000 instances. The new Net-Libraries also support connections to multiple instances of SQL Server on the same computer, and support Secure Sockets Layer encryption over all Net-Libraries. For more information, see Communication Components.

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