‘It has everything built in’ – those are the words of Microsoft, speaking about the release of SQL Server 2016, due to be released to the general public globally on June 1st.
With growing demand for secure storage and transmission of data for managed services as well as enhanced performance and ability to scale, today’s database user can be hard to please. However, Microsoft are so confident they’ve cracked it and can meet all the expectations of their customers that they’re offering free migration from Oracle to SQL Server 2016. Speed and security is the essence of SQL Server 2016 and includes advanced data warehousing integration, business intelligence tools, advanced analytics and hybrid cloud connectivity. New and existing users should be aware that Microsoft changed their pricing structure for SQL Server 2016. Instead of being licensed per processor, SQL Server 2016 will be licensed per core. This change will have minimal effect on all but the largest of corporations but it’s worth knowing. The three main editions of SQL Server 2016 are Enterprise, Standard and Express – the latter being offered for free download so that everyone can benefit from the many features it offers including some business intelligence tools and programmability. The fourth, Developer, is also free to download but for development and testing purposes only. Enterprise is a low cost version that contains all the features including 13 new ones. SQL Server 2016 offers robust protection with multiple layers that allow specified control access to data. In addition, the greater speed for many applications will enhance many essentials for business and other organisations, no matter how small or large they are. Through testing done by Lenovo, SQL Server 2016 has proven to be the fastest in-memory database ever to be built. Some of the many advantages of the SQL Server 2016 are: –
- Enterprise scale data warehousing is enhanced with in-memory ColumnStore that outstrips disk based solutions 100 fold.
- Intelligent applications with real-time analytics that have no impact on performance.
- ‘Always Encrypted’ end-to-end technology developed by Microsoft Research to protect your data at rest and in motion whilst maintaining performance speeds.
- Mobile business intelligence solutions built-in for any device. A modern web portal also allows management of KPIs and traditional and mobile reports.
- New Stretch Database technology offers you a hybrid cloud solution – dynamic stretching of warm and cold data – to keep and easily access historical data without changing applications along with cost-effective backups and disaster recovery that can actually reduce costs.
- Advanced OLTP in-memory technology (an enhancement to Hekaton) for real-time analyticsThis new functionality from SQL Server 2016 also allows specialists in managed IT services, like Cymax, to offer fully customisable, flexible and cost effective hybrid cloud and IT services across Microsoft Azure, MSP servers and traditional client-site SQL servers.
