Coming in 2016, the newest upgrades and features to SQL have developers everywhere speculating about the future. Microsoft has designed the 2016 release of SQL to be easy to use, traditional in application appearance and control, and most importantly data-secure. The most exciting new feature for SQL in 2016 is called Always Encrypted. Microsoft has created an extra layer of data security so that even when you are working with sensitive data such as social security numbers or credit card numbers, the data is secure. This ensures that even at the most vulnerable time for an attack, while data is being used, a person’s identity and company’s reputation are safe. The best part about this upgrade and its new features is that it will not hinder the performance of the application.
Another awesome new feature added to the 2016 release of SQL will be the native JSON support. The standardized data exchange format JSON is not currently supported by SQL. As of now, to perform JSON imports and exports you have to hand-code JavaScript, which is usually time consuming and quite complex. SQL Server 2016 will simplify this by contributing JSON support directly into SQL server much like XML. SQL Server will natively parse as well as store JSON as relational data, and will support exporting relational data to JSON.
The next new feature in SQL Server 2016 is the very interesting stretch database. The upcoming feature will allow you to dynamically stretch your on premise database to Azure. This is very handy. This means that you can keep your frequently accessed data on premise and move the more seldom used data to the cloud. The only downfall to this is if Microsoft does not get the partitioning right. If they don’t, your queries could stray into the cloud and kill your performance.
The last important update that will be released is the enhancements to AlwaysOn. These enhancements will continue to advance high availability and disaster recovery by releasing the ability to have up to three synchronous replicas. It will also include Distributed Transaction Coordinator support as well as round-robin load balancing of the secondaries replicas. Also, there will be support for automatic failover based on database health.
Although some of the enhancements and additions may seem like it will be hard for businesses to keep up with, Microsoft intends for this 2016 SQL Server release, just two short years after the last release in 2014, well worth getting. SQL Server has been on a fast track to release a new program, and the 2016 release surely will not disappoint.
