SQL Server 2016 SP1 released, SQL Server vNext available for download

Today Microsoft announced the CTP of the next version of SQL Server, you can download it here https://www.microsoft.com/evalcenter/evaluate-sql-server-vnext-ctp

As you can see I am already downloading this version

What's New in SQL Server vNext https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/mt788653(SQL.130).aspx

Install SQL Server on Linux https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-setup

SQL Server on Linux Documentation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/


SQL Server Service Pack 1

Also announced was Service Pack 1 of SQL Server 2016, you can download that here https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=835368

There are so many cool things in this service pack. For one,  all the editions now support all the programmability features like indexed views, columnstore indexes, partitioning etc etc, see image below

You are still bound by the memory and CPU limits but at least your code doesn't have to change, this is good news for ISVs.

A couple of more tidbits....

• CREATE OR ALTER (Yes, we heard you !!!) – New CREATE OR ALTER support makes it easier to modify and deploy objects like Stored Procedures, Triggers, User–Defined Functions, and Views. This was one of the highly requested features by developers and SQL Community.

• New DMF sys.dm_exec_query_statistics_xml – Use this DMF to obtain actual query execution showplan XML (with actual number of rows) for a query which is still being executed in a given session (session id as input parameter). The showplan with a snapshot of current execution statistics is returned when profiling infrastructure (legacy or lightweight) is on.
• New DMF for incremental statistics – New DMF sys.dm_db_incremental_stats_properties to expose information per–partition for incremental stats.
• Better correlation between diagnostics XE and DMVs – Query_hash and query_plan_hash are used for identifying a query uniquely. DMV defines them as varbinary(8), while XEvent defines them as UINT64. Since SQL server does not have “unsigned bigint”, casting does not always work. This improvement introduces new XEvent action/filter columns equivalent to query_hash and query_plan_hash except they are defined as INT64 which can help correlating queries between XE and DMVs.

There is much more, see all the news here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlreleaseservices/sql-server-2016-service-pack-1-sp1-released/


I also played around with some of the new stuff after installing vNext, see here:
Playing around with the new stuff in SQL Server vNext and SQL Server 2016 SP1