SQL with Manoj

Just got an email from Microsoft:

Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Public Preview Available – Try it Today!
 

[Register and Download CTP-2 Evaluation version (180 days)]

Direct download link:
– SQLServer2016CTP2-x64-ENU.box
– SQLServer2016CTP2-x64-ENU.exe
 

–> Smooth Installation with new setup-option and new features in SSMS:

Microsoft SQL Server 2016, the next major release of Microsoft’s flagship database and analytics platform, provides breakthrough performance for mission critical applications and deeper insights on your data across on-premises and cloud. The first public preview, SQL Server 2016 Community Technology Preview (CTP) 2, is now available for you to download to trial via Microsoft Azure.
 

–> Try it today for an early look at these new capabilities:

– Always Encrypted: helps protect data at rest and in motion

– Stretch Database: dynamically stretch your warm and cold transactional data to Microsoft Azure, demo video.

– Real-time Operational Analytics: our in-memory technologies are enhanced to provide real-time analytics on top of breakthrough transactional performance
 

–> Additional capabilities include:

1. PolyBase: More easily manage relational and non-relational data with the simplicity of T-SQL.

2. AlwaysOn Enhancements: Achieve even higher availability and performance of your secondaries, with up to 3 synchronous replicas, DTC support and round-robin load balancing of the secondaries.

3. Row Level Security: Enables customers to control access to data based on the characteristics of the user. Security is implemented inside the database, requiring no modifications to the application, demo video.

4. Dynamic Data Masking: Supports real-time obfuscation of data so data requesters do not get access to unauthorized data. Helps protect sensitive data even when it is not encrypted, demo video.

5. Native JSON support: Allows easy parsing and storing of JSON and exporting relational data to JSON, demo video.

6. Temporal Database support: Tracks historical data changes with temporal database support.

7. Query Data Store: Acts as a flight data recorder for a database, giving full history of query execution so DBAs can pinpoint expensive/regressed queries and tune query performance.

8. MDS enhancements: Offer enhanced server management capabilities for Master Data Services.

9. Enhanced hybrid backup to Azure: Enables faster backups to Microsoft Azure and faster restores to SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines. Also, you can stage backups on-premises prior to uploading to Azure.
 

–> Other Benefits:

1. Enhanced in-memory performance provide up to 30x faster transactions, more than 100x faster queries than disk based relational databases and real-time operational analytics

2. New Always Encrypted technology helps protect your data at rest and in motion, on-premises and in the cloud, with master keys sitting with the application, without application changes

3. Built-in advanced analytics provide the scalability and performance benefits of building and running your advanced analytics algorithms directly in the core SQL Server transactional database

4. Business insights through rich visualizations on mobile devices with native apps for Windows, iOS and Android

5. Simplify management of relational and non-relational data with ability to query both through standard T-SQL using PolyBase technology

6. Stretch Database technology keeps more of your customer’s historical data at your fingertips by transparently stretching your warm and cold OLTP data to Microsoft Azure in a secure manner without application changes, demo video.

7. Faster hybrid backups, high availability and disaster recovery scenarios to backup and restore your on-premises databases to Microsoft Azure and place your SQL Server AlwaysOn secondaries in Azure
 

Learn more about SQL Server 2016: SQL Server 2016 Preview Page