Today Microsoft presented SQL Server 2019 in general availability. Did you expect a lot of new features? I did not but it looks like Microsoft made a nice surprise.
Most important features:
- Support for big data using SQL Server, Spark and HDFS
- Support for AI (including Python)
- Data virtualization – allows to use SQL Server as “proxy” to other data sources (relational and non-relational, called PolyBase external base)
- Improvements to In-memory operations
- Auto tuning including execution plan optimization
- Always On using Kubernetes cluster
- Data analytics in direction of GDPR compliance
- Improvements in running on containers
It seems that important part is Azure Data Studio. I had no chance yet to play with it however it looks like pretty interesting tool which will replace soon (or already replaced?) Management Studio. The tool is a multiplatform open source.
More details on this site.