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SQL Server 2016 To Be Released June 1

Microsoft's venerable RDBMS gets a major update, with a developer-enabled version that unclutters the enterprise database solution development process.

Microsoft's SQL Server team announced an official release date for a major update to its venerable SQL Server relational database management system.

General availability for SQL Server 2016 is June 1. The announcement comes with specific information on features per edition.

"Today we are announcing the features in our editions, including Enterprise, Standard, and Express," writes Tiffany Wissner, senior director of Microsoft's Data Platform Marketing group, in a blog post. "With Enterprise, customers benefit from low cost of ownership with the full capabilities of SQL Server built into a single offering including our mission critical database, high performance data warehouse, rich data integration capabilities, end-to-end mobile business intelligence and built-in advanced analytics."

As Wissner describes in her post, SQL Server 2016 Enterprise is the most feature-complete version, with support for unlimited number of cores, advanced data and security integration features, cloud and mobile BI capabilities and the Microsoft R statistical computing programming language fully integrated among the vast array of capabilities.

A version of Enterprise, dubbed SQL Server 2016 Developer Edition, is built specifically for developers who need access to the Enterprise version's complete feature set for solution building and testing. It is expected to be free to developers who use it in conjunction with a Visual Studio Developer Essentials membership.

A step down from there is SQL Server 2016 Standard, which is limited to 24 cores, row-level security and policy-based management, support for JSON, some basic connectivity to R, and Stretch Database capabilities.

Microsoft will offer a free, stripped down version called SQL Server 2016 Express. It supports up to four cores, and has basic reporting and policy-based management features.

A full set of features for each division can be viewed in this PDF posted to the Microsoft site.

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