News

SQL Server 2019 Goes Live

On Monday Microsoft released the latest version of its flagship database.

The highly anticipated new version offers a number of a new features, including Big Data clusters, always-on availability and Scalar UDF inlining.

SQL Server 2019 can also run on Linux and offers a container registry. Microsoft is also touting improved monitoring, analytics, security, high availability and ease-of-use improvements in this latest release.

"SQL Server 2019 enables enterprises to gain intelligence over all data types, both structured and unstructured, by combining the power of new big data clusters with enhanced data virtualization," commented John "JG" Chirapurath, Microsoft's general manager of Azure Data & AI, in the blog post announcing the release.

"These powerful additions to SQL Server enable enterprises to not only store and query big data at scale but also combine it with structured data in whatever database it may reside such as SQL Server, Oracle, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, and others," he continued. "SQL Database [is] the price-performance leader for mission-critical workloads while costing up to 86 percent less than AWS RDS."

Note that Java support comes with SQL Server 2019.

SQL Server 2019 is available now.

The last refresh of SQL Server 2019 version came in late August. At that time, it was only known that Microsoft would be releasing the final version by the end of 2020.

The original preview of SQL Server 2019 debuted at Microsoft's 2018 Ignite show. The 2019 version was announced at Microsoft's 2019 Ignite conference, being held this week in Orlando, Fla.

About the Author

Becky Nagel is the former editorial director and director of Web for 1105 Media's Converge 360 group, and she now serves as vice president of AI for company, specializing in developing media, events and training for companies around AI and generative AI technology. She's the author of "ChatGPT Prompt 101 Guide for Business Users" and other popular AI resources with a real-world business perspective. She regularly speaks, writes and develops content around AI, generative AI and other business tech. Find her on X/Twitter @beckynagel.