Microsoft has just officially launched the latest version of its in-house database software. The central point of the SQL Server 2022 release is of course the optimization for the group’s cloud platform, Azure.
The tech giant says it’s the most “Azure-compatible” version of SQL Server since the software was first unveiled in 1989, and it’s also the first update. important day of the software in three years.
With connections to Azure Synapse Link for real-time analytics from the database, Azure Purview for data governance, and disaster recovery using Azure SQL Managed Instance, this release is in many ways the culmination of the substantive work on the connections to the cloud that the development team started a few years ago.
“From the start, the vision for SQL Server was really to make databases much simpler – because they were so complex? And I think that was, in many ways, one of the main reasons why we were able to continue development for so long.“said Rohan Kumar, Azure Data team leader at Microsoft. “One of the biggest things that comes to mind about SQL Server 2022 is that we’ve completely integrated it into the cloud with Azure“.
However, Kumar also pointed out that developers are still taking a hybrid approach. Indeed, they are fully aware that customers are discovering the cloud at different speeds and that some will probably never change. After all, there are good reasons not to entrust certain data to another company and to store it on its own infrastructure. This remains possible, even if the novelties revolve mainly around the integration of Azure.
A very useful new feature
One of the key new features is the new disaster recovery function, which reflects the hybrid approach of both variants: customers can replicate their data to a managed SQL instance on Azure and use it as a backup for their on-premises primary SQL server. If the main server fails, the redundancy system in the cloud can take over in a very short time.
For companies that have a hybrid setup anyway, Purview’s data governance service support now allows policies to be set whether the data is stored in SQL Server in the cloud or on site. In addition, according to the information provided, the developers have of course also worked on the general performance, stability and security of the database. The new version of SQL Server is now generally available, including free Developer and Express editions.
Users can leave feedback on the new software by visiting Microsoft’s SQL Server Feedback Portal. They can also deepen their knowledge with the Microsoft Learn SQL Server 2022 module and the SQL Server 2022 workshop.