Your First SQL Server 2000 Database

Expand the "Microsoft SQL Servers" branch in the left panel and also expand the "SQL Server Group" branch. Enterprise Manager should look something like this:

My computer's Network name is SERVER, and as you can see in the screenshot above, SQL Server represents my computer as a node called SERVER. Obviously this node will appear with your computer's Network name next to it. Expand this node and you'll see a number of folders appear in the right pane: databases, data transformation services, management, replication, security, support services and meta data services. In this article we're only concerned with databases, so expand the databases tab.

Each installation of SQL Server 2000 also includes a master database. One of the most important tables in the master database is the sysdatabases table, which contains a list of databases that reside on your SQL Server. To view the contents of the sysdatabases table in your master database:

• expand the master node under your databases node in the left pane
• click on its tables node, and then
• find a table called sysdatabases in the right pane.

If you can't find the sysdatabases table then click on the right pane and start to type the first few letters of sysdatabases. Enterprise Manager will highlight the table for you. Once you've found it, right click on it and choose the Open Table -> Return all rows option. Take a look at the various fields and values in the table, and then close it by pressing Ctrl+F4.

If you take a look at the list of databases under the databases node in the left pane, then you'll also notice the Northwind and pubs database, which come bundled with the SQL Server 2000 installation. These databases are not tied to the workings of SQL Server 2000 in any way, and you're free to do whatever you want with them.

However, instead of playing around with the Northwind or pubs databases, let's create our own. Right click on the databases node in the left pane and choose the New Database option. The database properties dialog will appear:

The dialog contains three tabs; however, all we really need to do to create a new database is give it a name, so enter MyDatabase1 in the name field and click OK. If you're feeling confident then you can set the location of the database file and its growth settings by clicking on the Data Files tab. By default our new database will be created as C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\data\MyDatabase_Data.MDF, but you can change this to any location that you like. You can also change the location and growth settings of the transaction log for our database by clicking on the Transactions Log tab, but we won't worry about that for now.