Getting started with SQL Server 2008 R2's Master Data Services

September 15, 2010

Introduction

SQL Server 2008 R2 introduced an extensible Master Data Management (MDM) platform, which is built on top of the SQL Server 2008 R2 database and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). This new capability is called Master Data Services (MDS). In this article, I am going to help you, step by step, to understand how to install this new capability and then how to configure it to use this great feature for creating, organizing, and managing master data centrally.

Note: Master Data Services is available with SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise edition, Datacenter Edition, Developer edition (for development purpose only) and Evaluation edition (for evaluating the product) only. For licensing details, you can visit the Master Data Service site.

Prerequisites

Master Data Services (MDS) has two main components viz. MDS database component (which stores all of the versions of master data, meta data, system wide settings, security related data, transaction logging, etc.) and Web component (a web portal called Master Data Manager and WCF Service to programmatically access all the features of MDS). You can install both of these components on the same machine or you can install them separately on different machines. These are prerequisites for installing and configuring Master Data Services:

• SQL Server 2008 R2
• 64 bit platform
• Web Server (Internet Information Server)
• .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 or higher

Installing MDS

When you install SQL Server 2008 R2, this new capability, called MDS, is not installed by default or as part of the regular installation. You need to install it separately from the SQL Server 2008 R2 installation.

Go to the “Master Data Services” folder in the SQL Server 2008 R2 installation media, there you will find masterdataservices.msi; double click on this file to get started, and you will see a welcome screen.

Figure 1 - Master Data Services Installation Welcome Screen

Click Next and then you will see the License Agreement screen. Read through the details and select “I accept the terms in the license agreement” radio button and finally click on the Next button to move ahead.

Figure 2 -Master Data Services Installation License Agreement

The next screen will ask your name and your company name to personalize your installation. Enter these details and click on the Next button.

Figure 3 - Master Data Services Installation Registration Info

on the next screen you can see that all of the components of Master Data Services are selected for installation along with a default installation path. If required, you can change this default selection to suit your environment and need.

Figure 4 - Master Data Services Installation Features Selection

The next screen is the final screen. Here, if you want to change your selection you can go back and change it or else simply click on the Finish button to start the installation of Master Data Services.

Figure 5 - Master Data Services Begin Installation

The installation will take few minutes and then finally you will see a completion screen with installation status.

Figure 6 - Master Data Services Installation Completion

Now that we have installed the Master Data Services bits on the machine, we need to configure it to make it available for use. The next section discusses how to configure both the database and web application components of Master Data Services.