Software giant Microsft has announced the new Microsoft SQL Server 2014 last Tuesday, June 25th. The new platform is said to be designed with cloud first principles and features in memory OLTP and more focus on real time, big data style analytics. As of press time, there is still no specific release date when the announcements were made. According to Data Platform Group Vice President, Quentin Clark “The big data strategy in unlocking real time insights will continue with SQL 2014. The role of data will be embraced more because it changes how business is set and how business happens. Real-time data integration, configuration, evolving analytical techniques, data signals from the line of business systems, plus more solid visualization and collaboration experiences are some of the important components of that change”.
Added Features For SQL 2014
The key feature of the new SQL server 2014 will be the in-memory, (OLTP) online transaction processing technology. This new feature is a technology that was a result form a project that has been in the works for several years now. “Hekaton” was the code name of the project when it was still in the development stage. Microsoft Research stated that Hekaton will improve the transaction processing speeds and minimize latency issues because of the in-memory data feature as compared to disk-data run systems. They have also stated that making the platform more of a “conscious design choice” will make the system more independent and will not need for a separate data engine. Based on these facts, some vendors are introducing separate in-memory optimized caches or by building a unifying layer over a set of technologies and introducing it as a new product. Because of this, it will be more complex for the customers and will force them to deploy and manage a completely new product. Microsoft stated that the platform will be an “in the box” version, meaning that there is no need to buy any specialized hardware or software and they will have the ability to migrate existing applications.
Cloud computing will be fully embraced, SQL 2014 will work easily and seamlessly with the cloud based Windows Azure. This will minimize operating expenses for any mission critical applications and protocols. Easy migration, cloud disaster recovery and a simpler cloud backup are out of the box capabilities of the new platform.
More on the In-memory Feature Of SQP 2014
More enhancements were made on the data warehousing and BI ( business intelligence) side of the platform. With the prices of memory going down, the 64-bit architecture have become more common the use of multicore systems are going up. With this trend, Microsoft has tailored the new SQL server to take advantage of it. Another in-memory enhancement id the buffer pool extension support to non volatile memory just like the solid state drives. It will increase the performance of the system by extending the SQL server in-memory buffer pool. This enhancement will make for faster paging on the SSDs with zero risks to data loss. This sis a sign of relief for most database administrators and hope this will push through without any glitches in the future.
These are solid announcement regarding the Microsoft SQL 2014. We hope that Microsoft will be able to deliver and make this platform more usable and popular as compared to previous versions of their server platform.
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