SQL server 2019 aims to build on the growth of the previous SQL servers versions, and develop as a sql server consultant for various languages, data types, cloud or on-premises, and operating systems. There are a host of new SQL performance tuning added to the system, and the effort by Microsoft has been to make the user experience and compatibility seamless on all fronts.
CTP 2.3
The Community technology preview (CTP) 2.3 is the latest release which has been made available to the public with SQL server 2019. This new release aims towards improvements on the previous CTP bugs and for increasing performance levels and security. Additionally, the following features are added to the CTP for an enhanced experience in integration with SQL server 2019:
Big data clusters
- Application deployment and management experience for a variety of data-related apps, including operationalizing machine learning models using R and Python, running SSIS jobs, and more
- Submit Spark jobs on SQL Server 2019 big data clusters in IntelliJ
- Mount external HDFS-compatible storage into big data cluster with HDFS tiering
- Use Sparklyr in SQL Server 2019 big data clusters
Database engine
- Reduced recompilations for workloads using temporary tables across multiple scopes
- Accelerated database recovery
- Query Store plan forcing support for fast forward and static cursors
- Improved indirect checkpoint scalability
- External library support on Windows for both Java and Python
- SQL Graph enables cascaded delete of edges upon deletion of nodes
SQL server analysis services (SSAS)
- Calculation groups in tabular models reduce the number of measures by reusing calculation logic.
Enhancements over the previous versions of SQL server integrated with CTP include the following:
Big data clusters
- Access your big data from HDFS (CTP 2.0)
- Deploy a Big Data cluster with SQL and Spark Linux containers on Kubernetes (CTP 2.0)
- Use Spark streaming to data to SQL data pools (CTP 2.0)
- Run Advanced analytics and machine learning with Spark (CTP 2.0)
- Use SparkR from Azure Data Studio on a big data cluster (CTP 2.2)
- Use Azure Data Studio to run Query books that provide a notebook experience (CTP 2.0)
- Deploy Python and R apps (CTP 2.2)
Database engine
- Resumable online index create allows index create to resume after interruption (CTP 2.0)
- UTF-8 support (CTP 2.0)
- Always Encrypted with secure enclaves (CTP 2.0)
- Intelligent query processing (CTP 2.0)
- Java language programmability extension (CTP 2.0)
- Database scoped configuration setting for online and resumable DDL operations (CTP 2.0)
- SQL Graph features (CTP 2.0)
- Data discovery and classification – natively built into SQL Server (CTP 2.0)
- Always On Availability Groups – secondary replica connection redirection (CTP 2.0)
- Support for columnstore statistics in DBCC CLONEDATABASE (CTP 2.0)
- Expanded support for persistent memory devices (CTP 2.0)
- SQL Server Machine Learning Services failover clusters (CTP 2.0)
- New options added to sp_estimate_data_compression_savings (CTP 2.0)
- New PolyBase connectors (CTP 2.0)
- Lightweight query profiling infrastructure enabled by default (CTP 2.0)
- Intelligent query processing adds scalar UDF inlining (CTP 2.1)
- New sys.dm_db_page_info system function returns page information (CTP 2.0)
- Truncation error message improved to include table and column names, and truncated value (CTP 2.1)
- Intelligent query processing adds scalar UDF inlining (CTP 2.1)
- Improved diagnostic data for stats blocking (CTP 2.1)
- Use derived table or view aliases in graph match queries (CTP 2.1)
- Static data masking (CTP 2.1)
- Hybrid Buffer Pool (CTP 2.1)
SQL server on Linux
- Memory pressure notification (CTP 2.0)
- New RHEL-based container images (CTP 2.0)
- New container registry (CTP 2.0)
- Machine Learning on Linux (CTP 2.0)
- OpenLDAP support for third-party AD providers (CTP 2.0)
- Always On Availability Group on Docker containers with Kubernetes (CTP 2.0)
- Support for the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC) (CTP 2.0)
- Replication support (CTP 2.0)
Security
- Certificate management in SQL Server Configuration Manager (CTP 2.0)
Master Data Services
- Silverlight controls replaced (CTP 2.0)
Tools
- SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 18.0 (preview)
- Azure Data Studio
Having announced on 24th of September 2018 at the Ignite 2018 Conference, Microsoft seems much pumped up for moving fast with feature enhancements and improving the capabilities of their ecosystem. The company concedes that the SQL server 2019 will create a unified data platform in association with Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) and the Apache Spark, to introduce the SQL server as a single and integrated solution.