Analyse structured and unstructured data
Use the language and platform of your choice
Breakthrough performance and scalability of your database
Access to rich, interactive Power BI reports on any device
View the new capabilities of SQL Server 2019
Additional features
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Break down data silos
Gain insights from all your data by querying across your entire data estate without moving or replicating the data. -
Intelligent database capabilities
Upgrade and modernise your SQL Server database on-premises, in the cloud and at the edge. Database compatibility certification eliminates the risk of app incompatibility. -
Built-in security and compliance
Use built-in features for data classification, data protection, and monitoring and alerts. SQL Server 2019 monitors, identifies and provides alerts on suspicious activity. -
Encrypt all of your data
Encrypt sensitive data and execute rich computations on encrypted data, plus enable customised data access based on role with complex row filtering.
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Maximum availability
Gain mission-critical uptime, fast failover and improved TCO using cloud disaster-recovery replicas and always-on availability groups. New Software Assurance benefit! Get a free SQL Server licence for Disaster Recovery (DR) in Azure. -
Accelerated database recovery
Greatly improves database availability by enabling fast and consistent database recovery regardless of the number or size of active transactions. -
Self-service BI on any device
Explore visual data and quickly discover patterns to make better, faster decisions with Power BI Report Server, which is included with your SQL Server Software Assurance licence. -
Highly scalable cloud services
Build highly intelligent, scalable cloud database services on Azure with the broadest SQL Server engine compatibility. Migrate existing apps or build new apps on Azure – the best cloud destination for your mission-critical SQL Server workloads
- Data Virtualisation: Query across data stored in Oracle, Teradata, other SQL Servers, Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Azure Cosmos DB, Cloudera, Azure Data Lake or the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) without moving or replicating the data.
- Intelligent Database: Family of intelligent database features such as intelligent query processing improve query performance with no application change. Customers will see performance benefits without any application change just by upgrading to SQL Server 2019.
- In-Memory Database: Improve performance for mission-critical workloads with in-memory database capabilities like persistent memory support and memory-optimised TempDB metadata.
- Secure Enclaves: Always Encrypted with secure enclaves protects sensitive customer data while allowing richer operations on secured database columns. A secure enclave extends client applications’ trust boundary to the server side. While it is contained by the SQL Server environment, the secure enclave is not accessible to SQL Server, the operating system or to the database or system administrators. These properties allow the secure enclave to safely perform operations on sensitive data in plain text.
- Extensibility: We now offer free Java language integration with SQL Server. Customers can now leverage Java for free with SQL Server 2019.
- Accelerated database recovery enables fast and consistent database recovery irrespective of the number of active transactions in the system or their sizes.
- By upgrading to SQL Server 2019, customers can query external databases using the data virtualisation feature. With built-in connectors, customers can query directly (oracle, Mongo DB, Teradata, Azure Data Lake, HDFS) without the need to physically move or replicate the data.
- Customers can achieve a huge performance boost just by upgrading to SQL Server 2019 without any application change with features like Intelligent query processing and Accelerated database recovery.
There is no price increase for SQL Server 2019. Plus, we added three new SA benefits for customers to make SA an attractive proposition.
Every Software Assurance customer of SQL Server will be able to leverage three new enhanced benefits for any SQL Server release that is still supported by Microsoft:
- A free on-premises sync replica for High Availability.
- A free on-premises async replica for Disaster Recovery.
- A free Azure async replica for Cloud Disaster Recovery as part of Azure Hybrid Benefit.
- With a free Azure async replica, you can start attaching Azure to your existing SQL Server accounts. It is a great benefit for the customer as they can start leveraging Azure for their business continuity planning. This benefit is part of AHB and only available in Azure.
- In February, 2025 we will be retiring SQL Server 2019 Big Data Clusters. All existing users of SQL Server 2019 with Software Assurance will be fully supported on the platform and the software will continue to be maintained through SQL Server cumulative updates until that time. Read the “Changes to SQL Server analytics” blog post for more details.
