In this paper we start the study of Schur analysis in the quaternionic setting using the theory of slice hyperholomorphic functions. The novelty of our approach is that slice hyperholomorphic functions allow to write realizations in terms of a suitable resolvent, the so called S-resolvent operator and to extend several results that hold in the complex case to the quaternionic case. We discuss reproducing kernels and positive definite functions in this setting and we show how they can be obtained using the extension operator and the slice hyperholomorphic product. We define Schur multipliers, and find their co-isometric realization in terms of the associated de Branges-Rovnyak space.Mathematics Subject Classification (2010). Primary 47B32, 30G35; Secondary 93A25.