Being a summer holiday season in most of western side of the world, in general it is better to keep an eye what’s new coming in the data platform world. When it comes to SQL Server, you may have seen a flurry of announcements since SQL Server 2016 has been RTM’d.
In this month alone there are few announcements that you may need to keep an eye, such as SQL Server Management Studio July 2016 release with an enhancements/additions like:
- Improved support for SQL Server 2016 (1200 compatibility level) tabular databases in the Analysis Services Process dialog and the Analysis Services Deployment wizard..
- Support for Azure SQL Data Warehouse in SSMS.
- Significant updates to the SQL Server PowerShell module. This includes a new SQL PowerShell module and new CMDLETs for Always Encrypted, SQL Agent, and SQL Error Logs. You can find out more in the SQL PowerShell update blogpost.
- Support for PowerShell script generation in the Always Encrypted wizard.
- Significantly improved connection times to Azure SQL databases.
- New ‘Backup to URL’ dialog to support the creation of Azure storage credentials for SQL Server 2016 database backups. This provides a more streamlined experience for storing database backups in an Azure storage account.
- New Restore dialog to streamline restoring a SQL Server 2016 database backup from the Microsoft Azure storage service. The dialog eliminates the need to memorize or save the Shared Access signature for an Azure storage account in order to restore a backup.
- ….any few more bug fixes, see the SSMS download page for additional details, and to see the full changelog.
Another news to make a note (be prepared when you are back from holidays) that announcement of Service Pack2 for SQL Server 2014 version. The Engineering team at the Microsoft is working to bring you SQL Server 2014 Service Pack 2 (SP2), it will equipped with a rollup of released hotfixes contains 20+ improvements centered around performance, scalability and diagnostics based on the feedback from customers and SQL community. SQL Server 2014 SP2 will include
- All fixes and CUs for SQL 2014 released to date.
- Key performance, scale and supportability improvements.
- New improvements based on connect feedback items filed by the SQL Community.
- Improvements originally introduced in SQL 2012 SP3, after SQL 2014 SP1 was released
Here is the SQL Server 2014 Service Pack2 download page and don’t forget to read Microsoft SQL Server 2014 SP2 Release Notes page
To feedback or raise any question then you can contribute/search at Microsoft Connect page and little more more enthusiastic make sure you can use twitter to tweet Engineering Manager at @sqltoolsguy on Twitter
