SQL Server Audiences and Roles
New: 14 April 2006
Roles represent five general categories of SQL Server users. Each role associates users in that category with the sets of tasks they perform when they use SQL Server, and the knowledge they must have to successfully complete those tasks. The audience for each topic in SQL Server Books Online is the role or set of roles whose members would find the information in the topic useful.
SQL Server Audience Roles
Every topic in SQL Server Books Online contains information that is intended for members of one or more of these five roles. The InfoCenters that are listed in the table are technology-specific topics that guide you to the information and tasks that are most important for being successful in a given combination of role and technology. For example, the Analysis Services Administrator InfoCenter has links to the information that is important for Analysis Services administrators.
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Architect
Defines the end-to-end technology and infrastructure design for a system. Also defines the vision, scope, and interoperability for the projects to implement each part of the system.Available InfoCenters for this role:
Analysis Services | Database Engine | Integration Services | Notification Services | Replication | Service Broker
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Administrator
Runs the daily operation of a system in such areas as system availability, performance monitoring and optimization, deployment, upgrades, troubleshooting, and configuration.Available InfoCenters for this role:
Analysis Services | Database Engine | FullText Search | Integration Services | Notification Services | Replication | Reporting Services | Service Broker
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Analyst
Creates reports and data models for personal use and perhaps for other people in an organization. Analysts can be data processing professionals, but are more frequently responsible for analyzing enterprise data while they perform other job functions.Available InfoCenter for this role:
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Developer
Designs, implements, and tests Web pages, reports, or applications that implement specific parts of the overall system that is designed by the architect. In particular, database developers design, implement and test the schemas and objects, such as tables and stored procedures, in a database.Available InfoCenters for this role:
Analysis Services | Database Engine | FullText Search | Integration Services | Notification Services | Replication | Reporting Services | Service Broker
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Information Worker
Translates the data available from a system into business information.Available InfoCenters for this role:
Analysis Services | Database Engine | Integration Services | Reporting Services
Note
The audience roles that are described here differ from the security roles that are used by the SQL Server technologies, such as the server-level roles or database-level roles that are defined for the Database Engine.
Matching a Role to Your Job
Books Online uses five roles that map to a range of job classifications. Using relatively few roles simplifies the presentation of information, but it also means that few users will perform exactly the set of tasks defined for a given role. Workers in large enterprises will frequently have jobs that focus on a more narrowly defined set of tasks than are described by a given role, whereas people in small to medium size organizations might have jobs that include tasks from two or more roles. For example, enterprise developers might work on applications, Web sites, databases, or reports only, and some enterprise administration tasks might be performed by database administrators, data center operators, and Help desk operators. By contrast, in a small organization, the same person might perform both database administrator and database developer tasks.
Therefore, use the roles as general guidelines for the type of information that is contained in a topic. Look for topics that are related to the role, or combination of roles, that best fits the tasks you perform with SQL Server.