Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Administration

Chapter 1SQL Server 2014 Architecture

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Getting to know the new important features in SQL Server 2014
• Understanding how new features relate to data professionals based on their roles
• Understanding SQL Server architecture
• Getting to know the editions of SQL Server and how they affect the data professional

SQL Server 2012 offered a fresh look at how organizations and their developers, information workers, and executives use and integrate data. SQL Server 2014 continues that story and pushes forward into the future with the integration of cloud and in-memory technologies. Exciting new features and improvements provide breakthrough performance, availability, and manageability for mission-critical workloads on premises or in the cloud. This chapter provides enough information to give you an understanding of how SQL Server operates.

SQL SERVER 2014 ECOSYSTEM

The SQL Server data platform has become quite large over the past few releases. This first section provides a review of the overall SQL Server ecosystem, which is now referred to as less of a product and more of a data platform, because many interactions with other products and features drive increased performance, scale, and usability. SQL Server 2014 focuses on the following areas:

• Mission-critical performance—New In-Memory Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) features that allow faster performance with no application changes, updatable columnstore indexes, buffer pool extensions using solid-state drives ...