Introduction

SQL Server 2016 is the largest release of Microsoft’s on-premises database product in many years. Improvements boost performance and provide new security and fault-tolerance options. New business intelligence (BI) reporting and analysis features provide access to Big Data and Web data sources, enabling customers to leverage their SQL Server tools and expertise to solve forecasting and other problems with data collected from many different sources. Packaging changes should help customers deploy lower-cost editions for more workloads. However, many features will require application changes or introduce compatibility limitations that may hinder adoption, while other features require subscription to Azure Microsoft-hosted services.

Overview

SQL Server 2016 became generally available on June 1, 2016. SQL Server is Microsoft’s on-premises database management and BI platform. (See the illustration “SQL Server Life Cycle“.)

The following key components make up the product:

• Database management