It seems like only yesterday that SQL 2012 was released but
2014 in around the corner already. It’s already at CTP2 (community technology
preview two) and is looking interesting.
As Microsoft has moved to a quicker release cycle it will
become more and more difficult it stay up to date. Indeed, many of the big hit
features of 2014 are not relevant to many organisations so there will be a lot
of customers who stay on SQL 2012 or wait for the 2000-next. However, these
features might be exactly what you need right now so let’s have a look.
The big hitter in this release is Hekaton and its related
features. Hekaton is a Greek word meaning hundred and that describes what Hekaton
offers, performance improvements of one hundred times for transactional
processing. Wow, one hundred times! The changes comes from moving to an
in-memory model for the relational engine. This removes the impact of moving
data between disk and memory and radically reduces the impact of memory based
operations.
The Greek phalanx comes to SQL 2014 - image by Andrew Becraft
Moving to in memory is, in many ways, caching up with
industry trends. In the past disk access was thousands of times slower than
memory, server didn’t have enough memory to keep most of their data in disk and
it was assumed that servers were not trust worthy enough to keep their data is
memory only. These have changed with the move to SSDs (solid state disks) for
storage, increases in memory and server resilience improvements. These days
“memory is the new disk” (Jim Gray) and the move to in memory is gathering
speed.
Hekaton’s includes in-memory “latch less” data access model,
improved algorithms for data access, natively compiled stored procedures and other
associated features including delayed durability for transactions, updatable
column store indexes and AlwaysOn improvements. There’s a lot in there and it’ll
take a while to digest the full set of changes.
As expected, there is also better integration between on
premise and Azure databases. On premise databases can now backup to the cloud
easier (building on a SQL2012 service pack feature) and leverage a new managed
service for Azure cloud backup. Built-in backup encryption is thrown in for
good measure, while this is a small feature it’s an essential for backing up to
the cloud so helps to complete the cloud picture.
In BI, the biggest feature is support added to the PowerView
for the multi-dimensional model. Like the backup to Azure, this was already
available as a service pack plus update. Not much on this list, but that will
happen when releases are so close together.
A few extras should be added by the time SQL 2014 gets to
RTM (ready to manufacture).
