Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Preview Release

Microsoft announced during the annual TechEd 2013 conference the preview of the Microsof SQL Server 2014. The TechEd 2013 Conference was held at various locations worldwide featuring developers and IT professionals gathered by Microsoft. During the TechEd Conference, Microsoft highlights the new version of SQL 2014 and one of its newest feature are the ability to do in-memory OLTP, and to analyze Big Data in real time. Aside from the announcement during TechEd 2013, details about the new SQL 2013 version were also announced in the SQL Server Blog. According to Quentin Clark of the Data Platform Group he stated that the in-memory OLTP support comes from the Hekaton Project that Microsoft has been working on for the past few years. The Hekaton which was demoed last year, the software giant Microsoft, described it as "a fully in-memory transactional engine delivered as part of SQL Server." The Microsoft project Hekaton, contributed to an increase in performance of up to 50 times over the current standard SQL Server. Based upon the current announcement of Microsoft SQL Server 2014, Microsoft will be delivering Hekaton's in-memory OLTP in the box with SQL Server 2014. According to Clark, he was quoted as saying that, "For our customers, "in the box" means they don't need to buy specialized hardware or software and can migrate existing applications to benefit from performance gains." he stated. The Microsoft SQL 2014 also features cloud support with simplified cloud backup, cloud disaster recovery and easy migration to Windows Azure Virtual Machines. The new release also focuses on Real Time Data Analysis of "Big Data," Clark was quoted that data "dramatically changes how business happens," citing a real-time data integration and new and large data sets being significant components of causing such changes. The SQL Server 2014 will be available in preview later this month, but there is no release date for the final product mentioned by Microsoft. For more information regarding the SQL Server, just head on to the official SQL Server Blog.