SQL Server 2016 general availability and Feature-Support

One can download the respective version (Enterprise, Standard, Web, Developer, Express – the Business Intelligence Edition ceases to exist) at MSDN. The Developer Edition is even free of charge by now (Blog-Article on that).

Download-Link:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/downloads/#searchTerm=&ProductFamilyId=650&Languages=en

I wrote about the new Database-Engine-Features before here: SQL Server 2016 – the Security & Performance Release

Here a look at the Features Supported by the Editions of SQL Server 2016:

msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645993.aspx

I want to highlight that the rumors about the support of Availability Groups in Standard Edition have been proven true and so-called „Basic Availability Groups“ with support of 2 nodes and one replica per AG – similar to Database Mirroring – can be used there.

In the Security area „Row-level Security“ and also „Data Masking“ made it into Standard Edition, but „Always Encrypted“ did not – this feature is only available in Enterprise-Edition.

The much-praised „Query Store“ is available in all Editions(!) (“Thank you, Connor”),as are „Temporal Tables“, and JSON. „R“ is available only as a „Basic-variation“ generally available, „Stretch Database“ on the other hand in all in Editions.

„In-Memory OLTP“ and „Operational Analytics“ unfortunately remain reserved for Enterprise-Edition.

It should be pointed out that from the BI components the Analysis Services Tabular-Mode is now available in Standard Edition as well. This is very helpful as this type makes a lot of sense especially in small Projects.

You can find the official Page on SQL Server 2016 with further information and links to Whitepapers here: www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/sql-server/