Microsoft announces new updates for SQL Server 2017 and Azure data services

At PASS Summit 2017 today, Microsoft announced several new improvements for SQL Server 2017 and Azure data services. To show the performance improvements of SQL Server 2017, Microsoft demonstrated how SQL Server 2017 on SUSE Enterprise Linux Server on an HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen 10 Server with scalable persistent memory ran queries more than 5 times faster than a fast SSD drive array at 50% of the cost.

Microsoft announced a new tool called Microsoft SQL Operations Studio which will help developers and database admins for database development and operations on Windows, Mac or Linux machines for SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, and Azure SQL Data Warehouse. With SQL Operations Studio, they can use T-SQL code snippets, favorite command line tools like Bash, PowerShell, sqlcmd, bcp and ssh, monitor database performance using customizable dashboards and more.

Microsoft released a new version Power BI Report Server that will enable keeping Power BI reports on-premises that connect to any data. This release includes support for scheduled data refresh, Direct Query, and a new REST API for developers.

Microsoft announced the new Scale Out feature for Azure Analysis Services with which one can easily set the number of replicas for their Azure Analysis Services instances to support large numbers of concurrent users with fast query performance.

Finally, Microsoft is making it easier for customers to migrate their Oracle, Amazon Redshift, and PostgreSQL database to Microsoft Data Platform. Through Microsoft’s partnership with Attunity, customers can use Attunity Replicate for Microsoft Migrations for free.