Growing SQL Server Features from 2008 to 2019

The latest edition of SQL Server helps your business from the ground up, extending your reach further than before. But at Microsoft, we remember our roots—including the features that grew SQL Server to where it stands today. With Azure SQL Database, you can also make end-of-support deadlines a thing of the past and take advantage of innovative cloud capabilities.

Performance

Regardless of complexity, today’s database engines are expected to return query results extremely quickly. With a shift from index optimization to in-memory transaction processing, SQL Server isn’t just faster— with adaptive querying and tuning features, it’s more intelligent, too.

Added in SQL Server 2019 Added in SQL Server 2016 Intelligent query processing expands on Query Store simplifies performance adaptive query processing, providing a family troubleshooting by quickly contextualizing query of features to boost the performance of plan changes. existing workloads. Persistent memory improves performance Added in SQL Server 2014 by referencing data pages directly on the in- In-Memory OLTP allows SQL Server to memory database file instead of copying them. interact solely with data in memory, speeding Row mode memory grant feedback up OLTP applications. extends intelligent query processing to adjust memory grant size for both batch and row Added in SQL Server 2012 mode operators. Columnstore indexes accelerate analytics performance by redefining data storage Added in SQL Server 2017 and queries. Automatic plan correction rectifies query execution plans causing performance issues. Available in SQL Server 2008 Adaptive query processing shapes Compressed indexes and tables improve query optimization strategies based on your performance in I/O bottleneck scenarios. application workload’s runtime conditions and Filtered indexes and statistics offer better query characteristics. performance and optimized storage.

Availability

The global economy never sleeps and neither does the demand for data. Availability groups—starting in SQL Server 2012—provide a new and better way to build high availability solutions. These availability features help ensure not just access to your database, but that you’re getting the right data returned.

Added in SQL Server 2019 Added in SQL Server 2016 Accelerated Database Recovery improves Support for Always On Basic availability groups database availability with fast and consistent replaces database mirroring for high availability. database recovery, instantaneous transaction rollback, and aggressive log truncation. Added in SQL Server 2012 Support for Kubernetes lets you deploy a SQL Always On availability groups provide Server availability group using a Kubernetes high availability, disaster recovery, and operator on Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) or read-scale balancing. another Kubernetes service of your choice. Enhancements in availability groups now Available in SQL Server 2008 redirect connections from secondary to Failover clustering helps maintain high availability primary replicas in scenarios where a listener for SQL Server instances. can’t be used and adds support for up to five synchronous replicas. Log shipping supports high availability at the database level. Added in SQL Server 2017 Replication maintains consistency between Read-scale availability groups provide databases and synchronizing. additional capabilities for scenarios that can utilize Database mirroring increases the availability of read-only replicas. your SQL Server database. Clusterless availability groups remove the need to create an underlying Windows Server Failover Cluster. Cross-platform availability groups support migration between Windows and Linux.

Security

As technology advances, so do the potential threats to business continuity and data privacy. Access to and protection of personal information is at the forefront of data security today. SQL Server now has multiple layers of data security built in, enabling administrative access without exposing sensitive data.

Added in SQL Server 2019 Added in SQL Server 2014 Always Encrypted with secure enclaves Backup encryption provides extra security for your expands on Always Encrypted by providing a backup files. protected region of memory where encrypted data can be decrypted securely. Available in SQL Server 2008 SQL Data Discovery & Classification lets you Transparent Data Encryption helps protect discover, classify, label, and report sensitive data. data at rest without changes to your application SQL Vulnerability Assessment provides you with and database. a full view of your security state and actionable Extensible Key Management enables third-party steps to resolve issues. vendors to register their devices in SQL Server.

Added in SQL Server 2016 SQL Server auditing creates customized audits of Database Engine events. Dynamic data masking limits data exposure while simplifying security design and coding. Change data capture lets you view table changes in an easily consumable format. Row-Level Security controls access to rows in a database table based on user characteristics. Always Encrypted provides separation between those who own and manage data.

Scalability & cloud readiness

Today’s databases in the cloud offer portability and redundancy. Cloud-based computing is the modern server farm. Although SQL Server can still be used on-premises, economies of scale really add up in the cloud. SQL Server gives you multiple deployment options that just didn’t exist before.

Added in SQL Server 2019 Added in SQL Server 2012 Big data clusters let you deploy scalable clusters Backup to Azure enables backup and restoration for multiple containers running on Kubernetes. from the Azure Blob service. Azure SQL Database Managed Instance helps Transactional replication to Azure migrates your you move to the cloud with minimal application on-premises SQL Server databases to Azure with and database reengineering. minimal downtime.

Added in SQL Server 2014 Secondary disaster recovery replicas on Azure provision virtual machines in disaster recovery scenarios. Upgrading SQL Server using compatibility levels allows the SQL Server Database Engine to be upgraded while keeping connecting applications functional by maintaining the same pre-upgrade database compatibility level.

Management & programmability

Upkeep is essential to any software as a service (SaaS), but only certain tasks require frequent human intervention. SQL Server now offers even more flexibility around deployment options—with support for Linux and choice of language for Docker containers—and data presentation with relationship graphing.

Added in SQL Server 2019 Added in SQL Server 2016 Resumable online index rebuild lets you Temporal tables help you to see data changes in configure a rebuild of your database to only occur your tables from any point in time. within a defined maintenance window. Notebook support for T-SQL, Python, R, and Available in SQL Server 2008 Scala in Azure Data Studio allows backwards Partition table parallelism provides better compatibility for Notebooks to be used with earlier performance and resource utilization. releases of SQL Server. Policy-based management and automation Added in SQL Server 2017 defines and enforces policies across an enterprise. Support for Linux Containers empower you to build DevOps pipelines using SQL Server on Linux. SQL Graph enables you to map and query relationships in a graph structure.

Business intelligence & analytics

With increases in consumer data collection, data analysis and business intelligence have become essential to strategic decision making. Machine learning and artificial intelligence on SQL Server can transform your data into meaningful insights at speeds that keep up with the torrent of today’s data-gathering techniques.

Added in SQL Server 2019 Added in SQL Server 2012 Java language extension adds Java support to Report Builder organizes data in reports and helps SQL Server Machine Learning Services. you design reports interactively.

Added in SQL Server 2017 Available in SQL Server 2008 Machine Learning Services extend in-database Data mining tools perform powerful machine learning capabilities by adding support analytics without you needing to know data for Python to existing R support. mining concepts. Business Intelligence Development Studio offers Added in SQL Server 2016 solutions such as Analysis Services, Integration SQL Server Reporting Services allow you Services, and Reporting Services projects. to create, deploy, and manage mobile and Report Designer organizes data in reports and paginated reports. helps you design reports interactively. Real-time operational analytics enable you to run both analytics and OLTP workloads on the same database tables simultaneously. PolyBase joins structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data in platforms like Azure Blob storage or Hadoop. R Server brings calculations and processing to where the data resides, eliminating the need to pull data across the network.

Azure SQL Database

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