Get your implementation knowledge ready (again) with this latest release of SQL Server 2016 CTP 2.3. If you haven’t attempted to see what’s new or what’s coming on with SQL Server 2016 (CTP) then this is the opportunity to know more about the product & technology!
SQL Server Release Services confirms that this is a “CLOUD FIRST” tenet, which means the release build was deployed to to SQL Azure Database service first, running in production prior to the release build.
As compared to the CTP 2.2 release this 2.3 version has new rapid preview model with enhancements to various features that you need to test them on development/test environments (VMs preferably) to get hands-on.
What is this rapid preview model?
The development teams will always look on the Connect site, community and other channels to obtain feedback/bug reports which might require several months and loops to obtain a response on certain feedback. However with this rapid preview model this isn’t the case, the team confirms that:
As part of our new rapid release model, you don’t have to wait several months for responses to feedback or to test new capabilities. This means you can accelerate testing and time to production. The frequent updates are also engineered to be of the same quality as major CTPs, so you don’t have to be concerned about build quality. You also have the flexibility to choose which CTPs you will deploy for development and test environments and won’t be forced to upgrade to the most recent preview release.
Ok we say that there are certain enhancements in key areas, such as:
- Row-level security support for in-memory OLTP tables
- A core engine scalability improvement, dynamically partitioning thread safe memory objects by NUMA or CPU, which enables higher scalability
- In-memory data warehouse (column tore) performance optimizations
- Many-to-many derived hierarchies in Master Data Services
- Several performance improvements to SQL Server Analysis Services, including DAX query performance
- Enhancements to Reporting Services, including an updated Report Builder with a modern theme and report rendering for modern browsers
- Improvements to the SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), Query Execution methods and DBCC CHECKDB statements.
For more explanation on the above see information from SQL Server 2016 CTP 2.3 Engineering post.
Not only on the core-relational engine of SQL Server also visit SQL Server 2016 CTP 2.3 SQL Server Analysis Services post, and SQL Server 2016 CTP 2.3 Reporting Services post.
Enough said on what’s coming on with this release and now how about getting hands-on with this release. There few methods where you can get you working on this release (hands-dirty). You can directly download the preview to incorporate as a separate VM image within your Evaluation platform or if you don’t want to muddle up your test/development platforms then as a part of your Microsoft Azure offerings try the preview by using a virtual machine in Microsoft Azure and start evaluating the impact these new innovations can have for your business.
What are you waiting for? Go for it!
