This post is authored by Amit Banerjee, Principal PM Manager, SQL Server and Bob Ward,Principal Architect, Microsoft SQL Server Data Services.
SQL Server has provided enterprises the capability to manage all facets of their relational data. Over the years, we have increasingly seen a convergence for the need of combining heterogenous sets of relational and non-relational data to meet the needs of business scenarios. This requires setting up a unified data platform that transcends the boundaries of all types of data. Incidentally, we are also celebrating 25 years since SQL Server first shipped on windows NT in 1993. The heart of SQL Server is mission critical performance, security, and availability and the use of our database platform in mission-critical environments is a testament to that fact. The SQL Server 2019 preview relational engine will deliver new and enhanced features in the areas of mission-critical performance, security and compliance, and database availability, as well as additional features for developers, SQL Server on linux and containers, and general engine enhancements.
Earlier at Ignite, Microsoft announced the first public Community Technology Preview (CTP 2.0) of SQL Server 2019. For the first time, SQL Server 2019 comes with big data capabilities built-in, with Apache Spark and Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) in the box ―extending SQL Server beyond a traditional relational database. This blog post covers the database engine features that are available in first public Community Technology Preview (CTP 2.0) of SQL Server 2019.
An Intelligent database providing Industry-leading performanceThe Intelligent Query Processing suite builds on hands-free performance tuning features of Adaptive Query Processing in SQL Server 2017 like row mode memory grant feedback, batch mode on rowstore, table variable deferred compilation. We have identified common classes of query performance problems which could benefit from automatic corrective approaches during runtime based on changes in cardinality or through leveraging a feedback loop based on statistics from past executions. These are features that we have already started leveraging in Azure SQL Database and remain a top investment area for SQL Server 2019.
These are new changes to our query processor which are available with database compatibility level = 150 keeping in line with our database compatibility based upgrade promise . Database compatibility level provides an easy certification path for an existing application which helps with future upgrades to new releases where the database compatibility mode remains the same. This allows our customers to reduce the effort require to leverage capabilities in latest releases for availability, performance and security without having to worry about re-certifying the entire application on a newer release.
Persistent memory supportis improved in this release with a new, optimized I/O path available for interacting with persistent memory storage. Any SQL Server file that is placed on a persistent memory device allows SQL Server to directly accesses the device, bypassing the storage stack of the operating system. This mode improves performance by significantly improving low latency input/output without any change to your application or database design . The ability for an existing database schema to leverage significant throughput gains allows existing applications with I/O bound bottlenecks.
The lightweight query profiling infrastructure is now enabled by default to provide per query operator statistics anytime and anywhere you need it. This provides the ability to look back in time and investigate query performance issues. We also decided to extend this capability to queries that are running on the server. This allows SQL Server administrators the ability to leverage Management Studio’s Live Query Statistics or the new DMF, sys.dm_exec_query_statistics_xml , to perform live troubleshooting of a current performance problem without needing to turn on any diagnostic data collection.
Enhanced security enabling Confidential ComputingEarlier this year, we announced Confidential Computing with Always Encrypted using Enclaves for Azure SQL Database. Now we have Always Encrypted with secure enclaves for SQL Server 2019 preview which extends the client-side encryption technology introduced in SQL Server 2016. Secure enclaves protect sensitive data in a hardware or software-created enclave inside the database, securing it from malware and privileged users during advanced operations on encrypted data.
SQL Data Discovery and Classificationis now built into the SQL Server engine with new metadata and auditing support which allows you to create solutions for key compliance requirements . We now have the ability for SQL Server catalog metadata to persist information about user-defined data classification labels.
Certificate managementis now integrated into the SQL Server Configuration Manager , simplifying common tasks like deploying certificates across machines participating in a failover cluster instance or availability group. This removes the overhead of managing certificates separately on each node of the SQL Server failover cluster or availability group instance.
Mission-critical availability to keep your SQL Server runningAlways On Availability Groups have been enhanced to include automatic redirection of connections based on read/write intent . This capability allows applications to be redirected to the primary replica without requiring a listener for handling scenarios where creation of a listener is not possible. This gives an opportunity for legacy applications which depend on a hard-coded server/host name but can still leverage Availability Groups on upgrade by redirection to the original replica after a failover.
High availability configurations for SQL Server running in containers can be enabled with Always On Availability Groups using Kubernetes as an orchestration layer. A Kubernetes operator deploys a Stateful Set including a container with mssql-server container and a health monitor. This introduces a tighter integration between SQL Server availability groups and Kubernetes. The operator will be available in the Microsoft Container Registry for SQL Server 2019 preview.
SQL Server Always On availability groups will support up to 5 synchronous replicas (1 primary and 4 synchronous secondary) with automatic failover support. This increases your ability to sustain simultaneous failures within or across data centers using SQL Server’s high availability and disaster recov