During the Ignite enterprise conference in Chicago, Microsoft announced SQL Server 2016 public preview, which is set to arrive this summer. SQL Server, for those that did not know, is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft and serves the primary purpose of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications.
SQL Server 2016 brings with it better data security, a new hybrid scenario called Stretch Database, real-time operational analytics with blazing fast transactional performance, advanced analytics, and much more. Here are some other key features of SQL Server 2016:
- Additional security enhancements for Row-level Security and Dynamic Data Masking to round out our security investments with Always Encrypted.
- Improvements to AlwaysOn for more robust availability and disaster recovery with multiple synchronous replicas and secondary load balancing.
- Native JSON support to offer better performance and support for your many types of your data.
- SQL Server Enterprise Information Management (EIM) tools and Analysis Services get an upgrade in performance, usability and scalability.
- Faster hybrid backups, high availability and disaster recovery scenarios to backup and restore your on-premises databases to Azure and place your SQL Server AlwaysOn secondaries in Azure.
SQL Server 2016 promises to deliver mission critical performance, deeper insights on your data, and allow you to reap the benefits of hyper-scale cloud. You can head over here to signup for the public preview.
For those of you still using SQL Server 2005, Microsoft will completely end support on April 12th 2016. You can head over here to check out upgrade guidelines, download migration tools, and read more information on the end of support for SQL Server 2005.
“After 10 great years, extended support for all versions of SQL Server 2005 is coming to an end on April 12, 2016. A year sounds like plenty of time to plan your migration, but, depending on the type of application, the migration destination, the scale of the move and resources allocated, migrations can take several months. In addition to SQL Server 2005, you may have heard that support for Windows Server 2003 is ending soon. As you plan your SQL Server migration, you should also plan your infrastructure migration to get the most out of our modern platform. Planning now will ensure that you are able to make the move in time and Microsoft is here to help you in that process,” Microsoft explains.
