Ross Mistry - Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2014

PUBLISHED BY
Microsoft Press
A Division of Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, Washington 98052-6399

Copyright 2014 by Microsoft Corporation

All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014934033
ISBN: 978-0-7356-8475-1

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First Printing

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I dedicate this book to my Kyanna and Kaden. Follow your passions, and never let anyone hold you back. And to the next chapter in the game of life, Return of the Autumn Wind.

ROSS MISTRY

I dedicate this book to my SQL family all around the world. You all bring a lot of enthusiasm and passion of your own to this profession, which inspires me and spurs me on to learn more so that I can share more. Thanks to each of you for what you give to me.

STACIA MISNER

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M icrosoft SQL Server 2014 is the next generation of Microsofts information platform, with new features that deliver faster performance, expand capabilities in the cloud, and provide powerful business insights. In this book, we explain how SQL Server 2014 incorporates in-memory technology to boost performance in online transactional processing (OLTP) and data-warehouse solutions. We also describe how it eases the transition from on-premises solutions to the cloud with added support for hybrid environments. SQL Server 2014 continues to include components that support analysis, although no major new features for business intelligence were included in this release. However, several advances of note have been made in related technologies such as Microsoft Excel 2013, Power BI for Office 365, HDInsight, and PolyBase, and we describe these advances in this book as well.

This book is for anyone who has an interest in SQL Server 2014 and wants to understand its capabilities. Many new improvements have been made to SQL Server 2014, but in a book of this size we cannot cover every improvement in its entiretyor cover every feature that distinguishes SQL Server from other databases or SQL Server 2014 from previous versions. Consequently, we assume that you have some familiarity with SQL Server already. You might be a database administrator (DBA), an application developer, a business intelligence solution architect, a power user, or a technical decision maker. Regardless of your role, we hope that you can use this book to discover the features in SQL Server 2014 that are most beneficial to you.

We assume that you have at least a minimal understanding of SQL Server from both a database administrators perspective and a business-intelligence perspective, including a general understanding of Microsoft Excel, which is often used with SQL Server. In addition, having a basic understanding of Windows Azure is helpful for getting the most from the topics associated with private, public, and hybrid-cloud solutions.

As mentioned earlier, the purpose of this book is to provide readers with a high-level preview of the capabilities and features of SQL Server 2014. This book is not intended to be a step-by-step, comprehensive guide.

SQL Server 2014, like its predecessors, is more than a database engine. It is a collection of components that you can implement separately or as a group to form a scalable, cloud-ready information platform. In broad terms, this platform is designed for two purposes: to help you manage data and to help you deliver business intelligence. Accordingly, we divided this book into two parts to focus on the new capabilities in each of those areas.

, High-availability, hybrid-cloud, and backup enhancements, aims to bring readers up to date on these important capabilities that are fully integrated into SQL Server 2014 and Windows Azure.

explores technologies that extend the reach of analytical tools beyond relational data to Hadoop by using Microsoft HDInsight in the cloud or PolyBase on-premises.

This book presents information using the following conventions, which are designed to make the information more readable and easy to follow:

Step-by-step instructions consist of a series of tasks, presented as numbered steps (1, 2, and so on) listing each action you must take to complete a task.

Boxed elements with labels such as Note provide additional information.

Text that you type (apart from code blocks) appears in bold.

Transact-SQL code is provided to help you further understand specific examples.

To help you become familiar with SQL Server 2014 as soon as possible after its release, we wrote this book using examples that work with the Community Technology Preview (CTP) 2 version of the product. Consequently, the final version might include new features, and features we discuss might change or disappear. Refer to the Whats New in SQL Server 2014 topic in Books Online for SQL Server at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb500435(v=sql.120).aspx