5 Things You Need to Know before You Switch to SQL Server 2016
Relational databases are used extensively in the IT industry because of their simplicity, ease of data retrieval, data Integrity, flexibility, and normalization. Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system which has been a favorite of developers for a very long time. There are many individuals looking for a job in the market with various degrees and certifications. Companies that want to boost their standing in the industry and gain an advantage on their competitors should try to hire the cream of the crop available in the resource pool. People, who have done Microsoft courses in SQL Server 2016 or any other important contemporary technologies, can be valuable assets for your organization.
People who have done SQL server certification can be hired as SQL Developer, Business Intelligence Developer, or Database Administrator. The salary for these profiles can range from $85,614 per year to $107,244.
5 Important Features of SQL Server 2016
SQL Server 2016 comes with many interesting features that make it an amazing technology. It can be procured by your organization for improving your relational database management.
1. In-Memory Enhancements and Improvements in Column Store Indexes
The SQL Server 2016 builds on the concept of in-memory tables and comes with vastly improved features like check and unique constraints, and parallelism. There is support for tables up to 2TB. Another part of in-memory enhancements is column store indexes. SQL Server 2016 offers advantages for columnstore indexes. The two key benefits of this feature are:
- Columnstore indexes on in-memory tables
- Updateable nonclustered columnstore indexes
2. Newly Added Query Store
For providing DBAs with insight on choice of query plan and performance, SQL Server 2016 comes with a newly added query store. This inclusion makes troubleshooting easy as it allows you to find performance issues due to any changes in query plans. It has a feature that captures a history of plans, queries, and runtime statistics automatically. It is also able to retain this information for future reviews. The Query Store has the capability to separate data by time windows, which allows for easy visibility into database usage patterns. This helps in understanding when query plan transitions took place on the server. The query store uses a Management Studio dialog box to present information, which enables you to force the query to one of the selected query plans.
3. Addition of Temporal Table
The newly temporal table is a new type of table, which offers the right information about stored facts at any point in time. Each temporal table has two tables. One of the tables has the current data and the other one has historical data. The tables with current and historical data are maintained side by side, any new changes in the current table are reflected in the historical table, and the old values go into the historical table in real time. Querying constructs are provided in SQL Server 2016, which help in hiding the aforementioned complexities from the users.
4. Encryption at All Times with Always Encrypted Feature
In SQL Server 2016, due to the “Always Encrypted” feature, it can perform operations on encrypted data. The best attribute of this feature of SQL Server 2016 is that the encryption key stays with the application inside the customer’s trusted environment. The fact that it is not with the server ensures better security. Always Encrypted ensures foolproof security of the customer data and does not allow DBAs to access the plain text data. The encryption and decryption of data takes place at the driver level, which helps in minimizing changes that have to be made to the applications that exist.
5. Polybase
With Big Data and Hadoop becoming increasingly popular amongst masses, there has been a need for SQL server connector. SQL Server 2016 solves this problem with its feature called Polybase, which helps in incorporating Hadoop into the regular on-premise product. This functionality helps you in dealing with large number of text files and storing them in Azure Blob Storage or Hadoop. This information can even be queried later, just like database tables.
Challenges in Recruiting Trained Workforce for Operating SQL Server 2016
SQL Server 2016 is a very important technology that is widely used in the IT industry. Due to its great scope, skilled workforce with Microsoft Certification is much sought after by recruiters all over the world. As an organization, managers should hire individuals who have done SQL server certification from reputed institutes like QuickStart. Not only does QuickStart offer quality training, it also has some amazing corporate plans.