SQL Server New Features

Performance:

• In-memory OLTP

OLTP: OLTP (online transaction processing) is a class of software programs capable of supporting transaction-oriented applications on the Internet. Typically, OLTP systems are used for order entry, financial transactions, customer relationship management (CRM) and retail sales.

• Buffer pool extension to SSD

With the cost of solid state disks (SSDs) going down, many organizations are considering using them. When you use SSDs, you need to change the way you think about designing storage for production SQL Server servers. SSDs use the same basic configurations for storage that you've always used, such as separate disks for data files, transaction logs, and tempdb; RAID 5 for the databases; and RAID 10 for the transaction logs and tempdb. However, you don't necessarily need to use the same design techniques when working with SSDs.

Availability:

• Always On Feature

What is Always On?

The Always On availability groups feature is a high-availability and disaster-recovery solution that provides an enterprise-level alternative to database mirroring. Introduced in SQL Server 2012, Always On availability groups maximizes the availability of a set of user databases for an enterprise. An availability group supports a failover environment for a discrete set of user databases, known as availability databases, that fail over together. An availability group supports a set of read-write primary databases and one to eight sets of corresponding secondary databases. Optionally, secondary databases can be made available for read-only access and/or some backup operations.

An availability group fails over at the level of an availability replica. Failovers are not caused by database issues such as a database becoming suspect due to a loss of a data file, deletion of a database, or corruption of a transaction log.

Security:

• Backup encryption support

What is Backup encryption support?

Starting in SQL Server 2014, SQL Server has the ability to encrypt the data while creating a backup. By specifying the encryption algorithm and the encryptor (a Certificate or Asymmetric Key) when creating a backup, you can create an encrypted backup file. All storage destinations: on-premises and Window Azure storage are supported. In addition, encryption options can be configured for SQL Server Managed Backup to Microsoft Azure operations, a new feature introduced in SQL Server 2014.

To encrypt during backup, you must specify an encryption algorithm, and an encryptor to secure the encryption key. The following are the supported encryption options:

• Encryption Algorithm: The supported encryption algorithms are: AES 128, AES 192, AES 256, and Triple DES
• Encryptor: A certificate or asymmetric Key

SQL Server Data Tools for Business Intelligence