News

SQL Server 2016 Moves to Release Candidate 1 Status

• By David Ramel
• March 22, 2016

Microsoft last week announced SQL Server 2016 Release Candidate (RC) 1 is now available, nearly feature-complete.

New capabilities in the flagship RDBMS include real-time operational analytics, the ability to present visualizations on mobile devices, integrated analytics, new security technologies and new hybrid scenarios that help enterprises stretch data to the cloud.

As part of a new, quicker release cadence, RC 1 comes after RC 0, issued earlier this month. It also followed soon after Microsoft highlighted new functionality of the database system at a New York City event, which also saw Redmond go after competitor Oracle and announce that SQL Server was being targeted for Linux porting next year.

"We are building this broad, deep, digital data platform," CEO Satya Nadella said at the recent event. "This platform is going to help every business become a software business, a data business, an intelligence business. That's our vision."

The SQL Server team didn't expound much on new capabilities in RC 1, but it did highlight new enhancements to SQL Server Reporting Services, including:

• An updated preview of the new Web portal. It's now the new default Web portal, and the classic Report Manager is now removed. Users can open the Mobile Report Publisher and Report Builder from the new Web portal using any modern browser.
• Custom branding. Users can customize the Web portal with an organization's logo and colors. Key performance indicators (KPIs) and mobile reports. Users can click a KPI and see a view with more details, and connect KPIs and mobile reports to parameterized datasets.
• Modern paginated reports. Users can design modern paginated reports with new, modern styles for charts, gauges, maps and other data visualizations.

More details about SQL Server 2016 can be found on its preview page.