Introduction
Applications are getting the update nowadays. Microsoft is adding some new features in SQL server and has just released a version of SQL Server 2019 (15.x). Compared to the previous version, (i.e. SQL Server 2016 and 2017), SQL Server 2019 (15.x) has some new and valuable features. This new edition of SQL server provides Big Data Clusters for SQL Server. It also provides additional capabilities and improvements for the SQL Server database engine, SQL Server Analysis Services, SQL Server Machine Learning Services, SQL Server on Linux, and SQL Server Master Data Services.
In this article, you will learn how this new version (SQL server 2019 (15.x)) is different from the older versions and it’s new features in detail. Installation of the different versions depends on your application needs. It may vary from person-to-person and their requirements. The different editions of SQL Server accommodate the special exhibition or unique performance, runtime, and value necessities of organizations and individuals. The SQL Server components that you install also depend on your specific requirements. This article will help you understand how to make the best choice among the different editions and components available in SQL Server.
Comparison to other SQL Server Versions
As per the above comparison, we found some extra features that SQL server 2019 supports. I am going to explain those features in detail.
Big Data Clusters and DataVirtualization with Polybase
- Deploy and run applications in Big Data Clusters.
- Store big data in HDFS managed by SQL Server.
- Polybase module allows for fast and parallel T-SQL queries. Polybase is getting expanded to support Oracle, Teradata, MongoDB, and more.
- Query data from multiple external data sources through the cluster.
- Easily merge and analyze high-value relational data with large-volume big data.
Intelligent query processing and Intelligent Database
- Intelligent Database features of SQL Server 2019 improve the performance and scalability of all database workloads without any changes to your application or database design.
- Intelligent query processing means improvements on the Query Optimizer that will improve the quality of the plans for all applicable queries. This includes dynamic memory grants for rowstore tables, table variable deferred compilation, batch mode on rowstore, and more.
- Automatically transforms scalar UDFs into relational expressions and embeds them in the calling SQL query.
Accelerated database recovery
- This is a completely new feature for SQL Server to perform database recovery in the time of a transaction rollback, an instance restart, or an availability group failover.
- With accelerated database recovery (ADR), SQL server 2019 Reduce the time to recover after a restart or a long-running transaction rollback.
Security
- Always encrypted with secure enclaves
- The term encryption is first implemented in SQL server2016 for transparent column encryption. The drawback of the first implementation is due to SQL Server not being able to decrypt the data, the queries on the SQL side couldn’t do any computations or manipulation of the actual column values. SQL Server can now safely encode a part of memory to perform calculations on these encrypted columns without ever exposing the unencrypted values to the rest of the processes
Cloud Readiness
- In the SQL Server 2019 version, a new feature for cloud readiness is added. The previous version (i.e. 2016, 2017) was also able to backup and disaster recovery to azure. But this new version of SQL Server supports free asynchronous replication on Azure Virtual Machines for disaster recovery.
- SQL Server 2019 (15.x) increases the maximum number of synchronous replicas to 5.
Management and programmability
- Support for the java data type.
- Simplifies the development of Java programs that can be run from SQL Server.
- Support UTF-8
- A new Data Definition Language (DDL),
CREATE EXTERNAL LANGUAGE, registers external languages, such as Java, in SQL Server.
BI and Analytics Support (Tabular Model)
- The new version of the SQL server allows many-to-many relationships between tables, where both columns are non-unique.
- Calculation groups can fundamentally reduce the number of duplicate measures by grouping common measure expressions as calculation items
Summary
I hope you now understand the difference between SQL Server’s different versions and the new features that have been added. Thanks for reading.