Guru's Guide to SQL Server Architecture and Internals, The

The SQL Server Executable

SQL Server's executable is named sqlservr.exe and resides in the binn folder under your main SQL Server installation. The folder is named binn because earlier releases of SQL Server shipped 16-bit client-side executables and libraries and these were stored in a folder named bin. The binn folder was reserved for 32-bit executables and libraries (the extra “n” signified “NT”). SQL Server no longer ships any 16-bit binaries, but the folder name for 32-bit binaries has remained unchanged.

The sqlservr.exe executable is a multithreaded console mode Win32 application. It can run as a console application or as a service and can write its output to the console, the error log, and to the Windows event log.

sqlservr.exe is linked ...