SQL Server 2016 to be generally available on 1 June

Source: Microsoft blog post. SQL Server 2016 will offer performance gains 'just by upgrading'.

Microsoft has announced that SQL Server 2016, will be generally available from 1 June. SQL Server 2016 delivers end-to-end data management and business analytics with mission-critical intelligence on any device.

Some key announcements made include:

• SQL Server 2016 is available in four editions - Enterprise, Standard, Express, and Developer. 

With Enterprise, customers receive the full capabilities of SQL Server built into a single offering, including the mission-critical database, data warehouse, data integration capabilities, end-to-end mobile business intelligence and built-in advanced analytics.

SQL Server 2016 Standard includes scalability of up to 24 cores, tabular modelling capabilities and granular control to data access.

Express, available as a free download, allows small scale database applications to be built at no cost.

The Developer edition provides access to the full capabilities of SQL Server to build and test new mission critical, intelligent applications. In March Microsoft announced that the SQL Server 2016 Developer edition will be free to download to enable broad access to and development on the full capabilities of SQL Server 2016.

• New SQL Server 2016 performance benchmarks. Lenovo published a new #1 TPC-H 30 TB world record3 using SQL Server 2016 and Windows Server 2016 on Lenovo System x3950 X6*, proving that SQL Server 2016 is the fastest in-memory database for business applications.

"SQL Server 2016 owns the top TPC-E performance benchmarks** for transaction processing, the top TPC-H performance benchmarks for data warehousing, and the top performance benchmarks with leading business applications like PROS and KPMG. Customers can also gain tremendous performance improvement by simply upgrading to SQL Server 2016 without application changes (e.g. queries will run up to 34x faster)," said Tiffany Wissner, Senior Director of Data Platform Marketing, Microsoft in a blog post.

Interested?

Download and test out SQL Server 2016 Release Candidate (RC) 3

Microsoft customers can move their Oracle databases to SQL Server and receive the necessary licenses of SQL Server – free with software assurance***. 

*Non-clustered TPC-H 30 TB. http://www.tpc.org/3321.

**Non-clustered.

***Software Assurance subscription required. Some restrictions may apply. Limited time offer—free training and subsidised deployment services available until June 30 2016.