SQL Server 2012 Coming on March 7

The updated database comes in three newly-redesigned flavors.

Microsoft has set March 7 as the launch day for SQL Server 2012, a.k.a. "Denali," the latest version of its relational database. There will be an online event to be held to kick off the product through the Web site SQLserverlaunch.com.

The keynote at the event will be delivered by Microsoft corporate vice presidents Quentin Clark and Ted Kummert. Ted Kummert will be presenting Microsoft's "data evolution vision" on where it sees the database and management of data headed, while Clark's presentation will be a general overview of the new features in SQL Server 2012.

There are the three versions of SQL Server 2012: Enterprise, Business Intelligence and Standard. There is also expected to be Web Developer and Express versions of SQL Server 2012, but they have not been detailed as yet.

Three prior editions – Datacenter, Workgroup and Standard for Small Business  are going away. Datacenter is replaced by Enterprise while Standard will replace Workgroup and Standard for Small Business.

But Microsoft's Aaron Bertrand, a SQL Server expert, said in a blog post that the final code will not be released on that day. "Let me throw out a dose of reality: if you are not on a [beta program] or otherwise going live with a private build or release candidate, you will not be installing and deploying SQL Server 2012 on March 7th. I promise."

Microsoft issued a beta of Denali more than a year ago and the release candidate is available from Microsoft's SQL Server site. There are improvements across the board, but Microsoft's SQL Server team has boiled them down to five main areas:

• Greater availability. Deliver the required 9s and data protection with AlwaysOn, delivering added functionality over CTP3 that allows customers to experience multiple, readable secondaries for distributed scale of reporting and backup workloads and support for FileTable and FILESTREAM which brings first-class HA to complex data types.
• Blazing-fast performance. More effectively govern performance in multi-tenancy environments like private cloud. Resource Governor enhancements include support for 64 resource pools, greater CPU usage control, and resource pool affinity for partitioning of physical resources and predictable resource allocation.
• Rapid data exploration. Empower end users with new insights through rapid data exploration and visualization. Discover new insights at the speed of thought with more feature/functionality in Power View, the highly interactive, familiar browser-based data exploration, visualization, and presentation experience for end users.
• Credible, consistent data. In addition to CTP3 functionality delivered for Data Quality Services and Master Data Services, customers can better support heterogeneous data within Data Warehouses through new Change Data Capture (CDC) support for Oracle.
• Optimized productivity. Optimize IT and developer productivity across server and cloud with the new SQL Server Data Tools, a unified development experience for database and business intelligence projects, and cloud-ready capabilities within SQL Server Management Studio for snapshot backups to the Windows Azure Platform. Additionally, SQL Server 2012 offers a new version of Express – LocalDB. SQL Express LocalDB is a lightweight version of Express with all its programmability features, yet runs in user mode with a fast, zero-configuration installation and short list of pre-requisites. For more information and to try it out, go here.

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