What are the most important new features of SQL Server 2019?

1 Big Data Clusters

One of the most significant new features of SQL Server 2019 is the support for big data clusters. This feature allows you to create and manage scalable clusters of SQL Server, Apache Spark, and Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) containers on Kubernetes. With big data clusters, you can store and process large volumes of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data from various sources, and use SQL Server tools and languages to query and analyze them. You can also leverage the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to gain insights from your big data.

3 Data Virtualization

SQL Server 2019 also enables data virtualization, which is the ability to query data from different sources without moving or copying it. Data virtualization uses the concept of polybase, which was introduced in SQL Server 2016, to create external tables that reference data stored in remote sources, such as Azure SQL Database, Azure Blob Storage, Oracle, MongoDB, or Teradata. You can then use standard T-SQL statements to query these external tables as if they were local tables, and join them with other tables in your database. Data virtualization can help you reduce data movement and storage costs, and simplify data integration and access.

4 Always On Availability Groups

SQL Server 2019 enhances the always on availability groups (AGs) feature, providing high availability and disaster recovery for your databases. AGs enable you to create a group of replicas of your databases that can fail over automatically in case of a failure or planned maintenance. This version introduces several improvements to AGs, such as support for up to five synchronous replicas instead of three for increased redundancy and availability, secondary-to-primary replica connection redirection so read-write workloads can be routed to the primary replica without any application changes, and distributed AGs on Kubernetes which enables cross-cluster and cross-platform AGs for hybrid and multi-cloud scenarios.

5 Security Enhancements

SQL Server 2019 provides several security enhancements to protect your data and comply with regulations, such as support for secure enclaves, certificate management in SQL Server Configuration Manager, and data classification and auditing. Secure enclaves enable you to use always encrypted with secure enclaves, which allows you to perform operations on encrypted data without decrypting it. Certificate management in SQL Server Configuration Manager simplifies the creation and management of certificates for encrypting data and securing connections. Data classification and auditing helps you identify and label sensitive data in your databases, and monitor and audit data access and activity. These features of SQL Server 2019 can help you enhance your database administration skills and capabilities. It is a powerful and versatile RDBMS that can handle various data types, workloads, and scenarios, providing you with the tools to manage and optimize your data platforms.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?