SQL Server 2016  is the biggest leap forward in Microsoft’s data platform history with faster transactions and queries, deeper insights on any device, advanced analytics, new security technology, and new hybrid cloud scenarios. 

SQL Server 2016 delivers breakthrough mission-critical capabilities with in-memory performance and operational analytics built-in. Comprehensive security features like new Always Encrypted technology helps protect your data at rest and in motion, and a world class high availability and disaster recovery solution adds new enhancements to AlwaysOn technology.

Organizations will gain deeper insights into all of their data with new capabilities that go beyond business intelligence to perform advanced analytics directly within their database and present rich visualizations for business insights on any device.

You can also gain the benefits of hyper-scale cloud with new hybrid scenarios enabled by new Stretch Database technology that lets you dynamically stretch your warm and cold transactional data to Microsoft Azure in a secured way so your data is always at hand for queries, no matter the size. In addition, SQL Server 2016 delivers a complete database platform for hybrid cloud, enabling you to easily build, deploy and manage solutions that span on-premises and cloud.

Benefits

• Enhanced in-memory performance provide up to 30x faster transactions, more than 100x faster queries than disk based relational databases and real-time operational analytics
• New Always Encrypted technology helps protect your data at rest and in motion, on-premises and in the cloud, with master keys sitting with the application, without application changes
• Built-in advanced analytics– provide the scalability and performance benefits of building and running your advanced analytics algorithms directly in the core SQL Server transactional database
• Business insights through rich visualizations on mobile devices with native apps for Windows, iOS and Android
• Simplify management of relational and non-relational data with ability to query both through standard T-SQL using PolyBase technology
• Stretch Database technology keeps more of your customer’s historical data at your fingertips by transparently stretching your warm and cold OLTP data to Microsoft Azure in a secure manner without application changes
• Faster hybrid backups, high availability and disaster recovery scenarios to backup and restore your on-premises databases to Microsoft Azure and place your SQL Server AlwaysOn secondaries in Azure

SQL Server 2016 SP2 contains fixes to issues that have been reported through our customer feedback platforms and Hotfix solutions provided in SQL Server 2016 Cumulative Update 2 through Cumulative Update 8. Service Pack 2 also includes supportability and scalability enhancements, and addresses issues that have been reported through the Windows Error Reporting system. 

 Feature Pack

The Microsoft SQL Server 2016 SP2 Feature Pack is a collection of stand-alone packages which provide additional value for Microsoft SQL Server. It includes the latest version of:

• Tool and components for Microsoft SQL Server 2016 SP2

Add-on providers for Microsoft SQL Server 2016 SP2

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