New Features Added in SQL Server
This post helps you in quickly reviewing the “New Features Added in SQL Server” from 2008 to 2016. The most common interview question is “What are the new features added in SQL Server XXXX?” To simplify the answer we are just giving the single line abbreviations. While preparing for an interview just have a quick look and try to remember 4 to 5 features on current working and last released version. Let’s say you are currently working on 2012 then you need to look for 2012 and 2008 R2. Also people would expect you to know few new features added in the latest version which is SQL Server 2016. Features are categorised for DBA, Developer and Security. That doesn’t mean that SQL Developer need not look into DBA section or vice versa. This is just to make it more readable, when a feature is more related to Developer we added in Developer section when a feature is more relevant administration part it will be in DBA section. Believe this will be helpful for a quick review for version wise feature support.
New Features Added in SQL Server 2008
SQL DBA:
Activity Monitor: Great tool to showcase resource utilization and performance using GUI.
Policy Based Management: The ability to manage standards on multiple servers
Enhanced Database Mirroring: Automatic data page repair and compressing outgoing log stream
Resource Governor: We can configure it to control SQL Server resource utilization and workload.
External Key Management: Provides a comprehensive solution for encryption and key management.
Hot Add CPU: Adding resources online without downtime.
PowerShell: SQL Server 2008 ships with PowerShell snap-in built on .Net framework 2.0.
Table Compression: Compress data and index pages to save memory and I/O.
Backup Compression: Native backup compression.
Performance data collection: Centralized data repository for storing and reporting performance data
Extended Events: Event collection is easier now compares to running a trace
