In this SQL Server 2019 tutorial, we will discuss an overview of SQL Server 2019, various SQL Server 2019 new features, and discontinued features, and will cover the below topic.
- Introduction to SQL Server 2019
- SQL Server 2019 download
- SQL Server 2019 new features
- SQL Server 2019 new security features
- SQL Server 2019 new features for developers
- Discontinued features in SQL Server 2019
- Different editions of SQL Server 2019
Introduction to SQL Server 2019
SQL Server was introduced in the year 1989 by Microsoft as a Rational Database Management System (RDBMS) established primarily to compete with other relational database management systems. The introduction of more advanced features in its latest release made SQL server 2019 more popular than RDBMS.
So primarily being a database management system, SQL Server supports SQL, the language for most of the RDBMS. But it also supports Transact-SQL commonly known as T-SQL which is Microsoft’s own implementation of SQL with some other capabilities like stored procedure, exception handling, etc.
For more than two decades, SQL Server has been exclusively used in a Windows environment. But in October 2016, Microsoft decided to release SQL Server for Linux as well.
In November 2019, Microsoft released SQL Server 2019 for general users. Microsoft has done significant improvements in the core SQL engine and also SQL server 2019 has built-in support for BIG Data (Data Lake, Apache Spark).
In SQL Server 2019, we can store enterprise data in a data lake and by using SQL and Spark queries we can retrieve data.
Now, we can integrate machine learning applications in SQL server 2019.
It also increased the database uptime and has features like Advanced Database Recovery.
SQL Server 2019 supports big data cluster deployment, this type of deployment has various additional capabilities like enterprise data lake, data-mart, data virtualization, etc.
Read: How to install sql server 2019 express on windows 10 step by step
Different Editions of SQL Server 2019
The editions of SQL Server are listed in the table below:
| Edition | Definition |
|---|---|
| SQL Server 2019 Enterprise | This edition provides extensive high-end data center capabilities, including blazing-fast speed, unlimited virtualization, end-to-end business intelligence, allowing for high service levels for mission-critical applications as well as end-user access to data insights. |
| SQL Server 2019 Standard | This edition provides basic data management and business intelligence database for departments and small businesses to operate their applications, as well as support for common development tools on-premises and in the cloud, allowing for successful database management with little IT resources. |
| SQL Server 2019 Web | The Web edition facilities scalability, affordability, and manageability for modest to large-scale Web sites at a low total cost of ownership for Web hosters and Web VAPs. |
| SQL Server 2019 Developer | The developer edition of SQL Server allows developers to create any type of application on top of the database. It has all of the features of the Enterprise edition, but it is only licensed for use as a development and testing system, not as a production server. SQL Server Developer is an excellent choice for developers and testers of applications. |
| SQL Server 2019 Express | The Express edition is a free database that is perfect for learning and developing data-driven desktop and small server applications. It’s the greatest option for independent software suppliers, developers, and enthusiasts who want to create client apps. SQL Server Express can be upgraded to other higher-end SQL Server versions if you require more powerful database features. SQL Server Express LocalDB is a lightweight version of Express that includes all of the programmability capabilities, operates in user mode, and comes with a quick, zero-configuration installation and a small list of prerequisites. |
SQL Server 2019 download
- Download the SQL Server 2019 directly for the Microsoft Official Website.
- You can download SQL Server 2019 either for your local machine or for VM over the cloud.
- The SQL Server 2019 is available to download on Windows, Linux, and Docker.
The SQL Server 2019 is available in 5 different editions and each edition has its own significance. A detailed description of each edition is also mentioned in this post below.
SQL Server 2019 New Features
In this section. we will cover Newly introduced features of SQL Server 2019 also, we will see what makes SQL Server an important contribution to the tech world.
SQL Server 2019 is more than just an RDBMS because of the below-mentioned additional features that have been recently added.
1. Big Data Solutions
- Big Data Solutions is a comprehensive environment for dealing with massive datasets, with additional advanced features like Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
- Big Data brings together Apache Spark and HDFS (Hadoop Distributed Filing Solution) into a single system.
- With the help of Big Data Solutions, we can solve any problem that can be related to reading, writing, and processing large datasets using T-SQL or Spark, It also allows us to fetch data from external data sources and even use them for Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), or other analysis.
2. Data Virtualization
- Data Virtualization is a technique of processing data (retrieval & manipulation) without having information about where the database is physically located.
- SQL Server 2019 provides Data Virtualization with the help of a polybase.
- It allows data from different sources, such as MongoDB, Oracle, DB2, Cosmos, and Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), to be integrated without moving data around.
3. UTF-8 Support
- SQL Server 2019 supports UTF-8 as a widely used character encoding.
- For storing UTF-8 data, we can now use a char or varchar column. This function enhances data compatibility as well as performance. As a result, Unicode string data will take up a lot less space than UTF-16 data.
4. Intelligent Query Processing
- Query Optimizer in SQL Server is the series of improvements that influence the behavior of SQL Server component query execution plans
- This provides dynamic memory grants for rowstore tables, a deferred compilation of table variables, batch mode on rowstore, and other features.
5. Accelerated Database Recovery
- In the event of a transaction rollback, instance restart, or availability group failover, SQL Server now has a whole new manner of recovering databases.
- Instead of spending unpredictably extended periods of time waiting for database recovery to complete, the SQL team has redesigned how recovery works and substantially reduced the time it takes.
6. Machine Learning Services
- Machine Learning Services was first introduced in SQL Server 2017 in which the most popular open-source R and Python Machine Learning libraries were supported.
- Additionally, Microsoft also provides its own Machine Learning libraries to Boost your Data Science and Machine Learning projects.
- In SQL Server 2019 Microsoft adds some more features like Partition-based modeling which will help to create and train models over partitioned data.
7. Hybrid Buffer Pool
- In SQL Server 2019 instead of copies of data pages cached in volatile DRAM, it uses Hybrid Buffer Pool which allows buffer pool objects to refer to data pages in database files stored on persistent memory (PMEM) devices.
- The hybrid buffer pool performs load and store operations on memory-mapped files, as well as uses the persistent memory (PMEM) device as a buffer pool cache and a storage device for database files. This creates an exclusive condition in which a logical read and a physical read are virtually the same things.
8. Optimized TempDB metadata
- For many SQL Server applications, metadata contention in tempdb has traditionally been a scalability issue. In SQL Server 2019, a new feature in the in-memory database feature family is introduced: memory-optimized tempdb metadata.
- This innovation effectively removes the bottleneck and allows tempdb-heavy workloads to scale to new heights. The system tables that manage temporary table metadata in SQL Server 2019 can be migrated to latch-free, non-durable, memory-optimized tables.
9. Containers
- In SQL Server 2019 Microsoft Container Registry has replaced Docker Hub for new official Microsoft container images.
- Starting the SQL Server process as a non-root user by default in SQL Server 2019 allows you to design safer containers.
- With the help of SQL Server 2019, we can now run SQL Server Containers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
10. Analysis Services
- Calculation groups is a new feature introduced in SQL Server 2019 that can drastically minimize the number of unnecessary measurements by grouping common measure expressions as calculation items. Calculation groups are supported in tabular models with compatibility levels of 1500 and higher.
- In SQL Server 2019 to enhance user query response time, Query interleaving is introduced, which is a tabular mode system configuration useful in high-concurrency scenarios.
- With the help of SQL Server 2019, we can have a many-to-many relationship among the tabular data.
SQL Server 2019 New Security Features
SQL Server facilitates security architecture which allows database administrators and developers to build secure database applications and defend against multiple threats.
With the addition of new features and functionality in each version, SQL Server has improved on the preceding edition, and SQL Server 2019 follows this trend.
1. Certificate Management
SSL/TLS certificates are often implemented by many organizations having a large number of SQL Servers to secure SQL Server access. And they have to spend considerable effort to maintain their SQL Server certificates manually. But now the SQL Server Configuration Manager has been integrated with certificate management in SQL Server 2019, easing typical activities like:
- Certificates installed in a SQL Server instance can be viewed and validated.
- Certificates can be deployed on machines that are part of an Always On Availability Group or on systems that are part of an Always On failover.
2. Data Discovery & Classification
Classifying sensitive data (commercial, financial, healthcare, personal information, etc.) can be crucial to an organization. So this feature allows for the classification and labeling of columns in user tables. It can help in the following way:
- Admins will be able to easily determine where sensitive data is stored in the organization, allowing them to take the appropriate security measures to protect the database.
- Assisting in the fulfillment of data privacy and regulatory compliance requirements.
3. Always Encrypted with secure enclaves
- This feature helps to protect data by encrypting it on the client-side and never allows the data or cryptographic keys to be exposed in plaintext inside the Database Engine.
- As a result, the database’s ability to work with encrypted columns is severely limited.
4. Improved Auditing
Auditing in SQL Server simply means tracking events that take place on the database engine. In SQL Server 2019 a new field is added to audit logs which contains sensitivity classifications of the data.
SQL Server 2019 new features for developers
There are a lot of enhancements in SQL Server 2019 for developers on graph, spatial data types, UTF-8 support, etc. And, also it has a framework that allows developers to use the language of their choice.
We have already covered a few SQL Server 2019 developer features in the new features section. Here are a few:
- For developers, there are significant improvements in the ETL process and provides the data virtualization feature, where we can integrate data from various other data sources like Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), Cosmos, Oracle, DB2, MongoDB, etc. In SQL Server 2019, developers can read, write and process big data using T-SQL and spark.
- SQL Server developers can now integrate and process structured and unstructured data sources using T-SQL using PolyBase.
- It allows us to create a char or varchar column to store UTF-8 data, sql server 2019 supports UTF-8 character encoding.
- Developers can query data from external data sources, even from multiple external data sources like SQL Server, Oracle, Teradata, MongoDB, and ODBC.
- SQL Server 2019 allows us to create a database snapshot, which is a read-only and static view of the database.
- In SQL Server 2019, Graph tables now support table and index partitioning.
- Developers can use SHORTEST_PATH function inside MATCH to find the shortest path between two nodes in a graph. Apart from this, developer’s now can define cascaded delete actions on an edge constraint in a graph database in SQL Server 2019.
- There are a few updates for the Java developers to work with SQL Server like the new java language SDK and it is open source. Also, it now supports various Java data types like boolean (Bit), short(Tinyint), int(Int), float (Real), long (Bigint), double (float), String (nvarchar(n)), etc.
- For Java, SQL Server now includes Azul Systems Zulu Embedded which is the new default Java runtime.
Discontinued Features in SQL Server 2019
The database-specific configuration settings listed below are no longer available:
- DISABLE_BATCH_MODE_ADAPTIVE_JOINS: This option is used to disable the option of adaptive join in SQL Server. But in the latest SQL Server 2019, it is been changed to BATCH_MODE_ADAPTIVE_JOINS.
- DISABLE_BATCH_MODE_MEMORY_GRANT_FEEDBACK: This option is used to disable batch mode memory grant feedback for all query executions started from the database. But in SQL Server 2019 it is been changed to BATCH_MODE_MEMORY_GRANT_FEEDBACK.
- DISABLE_INTERLEAVED_EXECUTION_TVF: This command is used to disable interleaved execution for all query executions started from the database. But now in SQL Server 2019, it is been changed to INTERLEAVED_EXECUTION_TVF.
In this SQL Server 2019 tutorial, we have discussed an overview of SQL Server 2019, various SQL Server 2019 new features, and discontinued features, and will cover the below topic.
- Introduction to SQL Server 2019
- SQL Server 2019 Download
- What are the SQL Server 2019 New Features
- SQL Server 2019 New Security Features
- Various new sql server 2019 developer feature
- Discontinued Features in SQL Server 2019
- Different Editions of SQL Server 2019
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