4 Features of the Upcoming SQL Server 2016 that are Exciting Remote Database Experts

The new SQL Server 2016 is the real deal or so it seems today. There is a lot of talk about what it can do for your business. In the first week of May 2015, Microsoft announced its release during the Microsoft Ignite Conference. Ever since, there has been a lot of speculation concerning what it can do and what it cannot do. Currently, Microsoft is putting some finishing touches on the server and has also hinted some of the features that it comes with. There are so many features you can look forward to. Here are just some of those that are going to impress every database administrator.

Work for database experts becomes easier

The reason why the SQL Server 2016 is gaining a lot of attention especially in the DBA circles is because of things like security and user-friendliness. Why would you as a DBA want to invest in such a system?

1. It is always encrypted

Actually, it is not always encrypted but there is the option to do this. When you use this feature you can always encrypt the data in the SQL server. This feature makes it possible for only the applications that call SQL server to access the encrypted data. It enables the client application owners to have control of who gets access to their confidential data by allowing the client application to be the only one that has the encryption key. You can sleep peacefully knowing that your private data is exactly that- private.

2. Data masking is now dynamic

If you would like to secure your private data such that some people are able to see it while others access only an obscure version of it then the dynamic data masking is the way to go. This presents the data in confidential columns vaguely to users who do not have the authority to see all the data. It is especially beneficial for businesses that are dealing with private data such as customer’s credit card numbers. You can obscure the data such that someone like say your customer care agent is only able to access the last four digits of the number. Other people who are authorized to login and view the data will be able to get all the credit card information.

3. Polybase

This gives you the ability to query distributed data sets. With this feature now you can use Transact SQL statements when you are querying, SQL Azure blob storage or Hadoop. This makes it possible for you to fetch data from Hadoop without having to find out the internals of Hadoop.

4. JSON Support

Finally it has arrived- Java Script Object Notation (JSON) support. The SQL Server 2016 allows you to interchange JSON data between applications and the SQL Server database engine. Microsoft has given the SQL server ability to parse data in JSON format so that it is able to store in a relation format. On top of that, using this JSON support feature it is possible to turn relational data into JSON formatted data.

There are many other features that you can expect to find in the SQL Server 2016. These are just four of the most exciting features that have database experts all over the world tickling in excitement. Once the system is up and running you will get to experience them first hand.