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Microsoft Announces SQL Server 2016 CTP 3, Azure Data Lake Preview and More

• By David Ramel
• 10/28/2015

Joseph Sirosh, Microsoft's new Data Group head, today announced a new CTP of SQL Server 2016, along with a preview of Azure Data Lake Store and Analytics services and a preview of Azure SQL Database In-Memory OLTP and Operational Analytics.

Announced during the PASS Summit, the CTP 3.0 version of SQL Server 2016 will be available this week.

Microsoft said some of the most important new features in its flagship RDBMS include:

• Always Encrypted technology, based on projects from Microsoft Research, that protects data at rest and in motion.
• Built-in SQL Server R Services, a new workload for fast, predictive, in-database analytics.
• PolyBase -- built into SQL Server to extract value from unstructured and structured data using T-SQL.
• Stretch Database for the active archiving of cold data to the Microsoft Azure cloud.
• Native JSON support to offer better performance and support for many types of data.
• SQL Server Enterprise Information Management (EIM) tools and Analysis Services upgrades for better performance, usability and scalability.
• Faster hybrid backups, high availability and disaster recovery scenarios to backup and restore on-premises databases to Azure and place SQL Server AlwaysOn secondaries in Azure.

"This preview also includes new Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities for SQL Server Analysis Services and SQL Server Reporting Services, and we plan to include mobile BI capabilities in the coming months to deliver end-to-end BI solutions for on-premises implementations," said Sirosh, who was just recently promoted to head the newly combined Data Group. Sirosh replaced T.K. "Ranga" Rengarajan, who left to lead the company's Global Development Centers. As part of the reorg, the Data Group was streamlined to oversee all of the company's database and analytics initiatives, including SQL Server and the Cortana Analytics Suite.

Azure Data Lake, a component of the Cortana Analytics Suite, has previews available now for the Store and Analytics service. "Azure Data Lake offers unbelievable analytic processing power and an exabyte-scale Big Data store as a fully managed service," Sirosh said. "It includes all the capabilities required to make it easy for developers, data scientists and analysts to store data of any size, shape and speed, and do all types of processing and analytics across platforms and languages."

The Azure SQL Database preview highlights In-Memory OLTP and the general availability of Operational Analytics. "In-Memory OLTP dramatically improves transaction processing performance," Sirosh said. "Our In-Memory Columnstore and In-Memory OLTP can naturally be used together in the same cloud solution for high-throughput transaction processing and real-time operational analytics."

Microsoft has said In-Memory OLTP provides up to 30x the performance of disk-based transactions. "With these enhancements, we also introduce the unique capability to use our in-memory columnstore delivering 100x faster queries with in-memory OLTP for in-memory performance and real-time operational analytics," the company said.

Sirosh noted the company's move to a cloud-first product development model that sees new features proven and optimized in the cloud for a better on-premises experience. "In addition, we offer a consistent experience across on-premises and cloud with common development and management tools and common T-SQL," he said.

As the summit progresses, more news will be available on the company's Server & Cloud Blog.