Microsoft SQL Server 2019 is a modern, self-hosted release of Microsoft's primary database engine. The marquee enhancement is the seamless combination of SQL Server with Spark, HDFS, and other Linux-powered big data components to support Big Data Clusters. The Big Data Cluster enables massively scaled AI operations on the high-volume data resident in HDFS and Microsoft SQL Server 2019 storage pools. You can deploy Big Data Clusters as containers in locally hosted Kubernetes clusters, such as AKS on Azure Stack, or in any cloud with a managed Kubernetes service such as Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
SQL 2019 also delivers improvements in the core SQL Server database engine such as feature parity for Linux machines. Other important innovations impact SQL Server Analysis Services and SQL Server Reporting Services.
Because Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 have reached end of support status, moving to a current version of SQL Server makes sense for businesses worried about security, manageability, and competitiveness. Progent has twenty years of background planning, implementing, optimizing, and debugging SQL Server environments and can help companies of all sizes to perform an efficient migration to Microsoft SQL Server 2019. Progent's Microsoft Gold-certified Microsoft SQL Server experts can assist you to evaluate the advantages for transitioning to Microsoft SQL Server 2019 from an older version of Microsoft SQL Server and Progent can provide rapid remote or on-premises access to experts in solution architecture, application programming, DBA services, and data security. Progent can help you to install SQL Server 2019 on premises, in a private or public cloud, or in a hybrid on-prem/cloud network architecture.
You can work with Progent's experts on an occasional basis for tasks like system architecture guidance or debugging or you can get comprehensive project management and co-management support to ensure your SQL Server 2019 migration is successfully carried out on time and within budget. Progent offers the skills of certified information security experts, disaster recovery/business continuity preparedness specialists, and SQL database application developers to ensure your SQL Server 2019 ecosystem provides maximum business value.
Progent's Microsoft Gold-certified consultants can also assist your organization to set up Microsoft SQL Server 2019 to operate with other Microsoft products and technologies by offering expertise that includes Windows Server 2019 consulting, Hyper-V planning and integration consulting, Exchange Server 2019 solution design consulting, SharePoint 2019 development consulting services, hybrid integration with Microsoft Azure cloud services, Skype for Business configuration consulting, Dynamics GP/Great Plains custom reporting consulting, and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) consulting.
Progent's veteran software developers can assist your organization to plan, produce, validate, deploy, and troubleshoot apps that utilize SQL Server 2019 and Progent can provide expertise in data modeling, OLTP, Data Warehousing and Mining, ETL, tuning, availability, backup/recovery, OLAP, and integration support for Amazon MWS. To find out more about Progent's SQL Server development and debugging expertise, refer to SQL Server application development experts.
SQL Server 2019 Versions
SQL Server 2019 is available in five basic editions distinguished by price, performance, scale and licensing rules. Progent can help you decide which editions make sense for your needs, and Progent can also help you simplify license management.
Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Enterprise is the high-end version of SQL Server 2019 and is intended for critical applications requiring the most advanced levels of scale, resilience, and performance. Processing power and memory supported per database are bound only by the operating system limit, the number of virtual machines allowed is unlimited, and relational database size can be as high as 524 PB. High availability features unique to the Enterprise version of SQL Server 2019 include Always On availability groups for collective failover, online page and file restore, online index create, suspend and resume online index rebuilds, mirrored backups, and live add memory and CPU. Scalability and throughput functions for the Enterprise edition of Microsoft SQL Server 2019 include in-memory database, resource governance, auto tuning, batch mode adaptive joins plus memory grant feedback. The Enterprise version of SQL Server 2019 also offers a more complete collection of data warehousing services, Master Data Services and Reporting Services than other versions.
SQL Server 2019 Developer edition is basically the same as the Enterprise edition, but is restricted for use exclusively for development and validation. The Developerversion is not licensed for use in a production system. SQL Server 2019 Developer handles only one client for SQL Server Distributed Replay simulation.
Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Standard edition is intended for departments and small businesses who need a basic, low-overhead solution for information management and business intelligence. Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Standard version supports all the security features of SQL Server 2019 Enterprise, but compute scale is restricted to the smaller of four sockets or two dozen cores. For every instance of SQL Server Database Engine, the most RAM for the buffer pool cache is 128 GB, and max RAM-optimized data size is 32 GB. Unlike the Enterprise version, the Standard version of SQL Server 2019 does not come with advanced R and Python integration and does not incorporate Machine Learning Services, but supports the remaining development features as well as the management tools provided with the Enterprise version. Advanced features like transparent data encryption and Big Data Clusters are included with the Standard edition.
Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Web edition is a value-priced option designed for web hosting organizations. Compute capacity is limited to the smaller of 4 sockets or 16 cores, maximum buffer pool memory is 64 MB, and maximum memory per instance is 64 GB. Unlike the Standard version of Microsoft SQL Server 2019, Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Web version does not include Always On failover cluster instances, basic availability groups, or transactional replication to Windows Azure. The Web version also does not support transparent database encryption. You can profile Microsoft SQL Server Web by using Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise or SQL Server Standard editions, and SQL Server Web comes with the other management features provided with the Standard edition. Data warehousing, tabular models, BI Services, and some Reporting Services are not provided.
SQL Server 2019 Express, offered in a few variants, is a free low-end edition of Microsoft SQL Server designed for training or for creating PC, bare-bones-server, and end-user applications that do not need an advanced database. Compute capacity is limited to the smaller of one socket or 4 cores, max buffer pool cache memory is 1.41 MB, and top RAM-optimized data is 352 MB. If apps created with Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Express expand to require more capacity or additional functionality, you can migrate smoothly to more powerful versions of Microsoft SQL Server. SQL Server 2019 Express with Advanced Services includes Basic R and SQL Graph integration, the distributed replay management utility, and SSDT. SQL Server 2019 Express with Advanced Services can also host a SSRS database. SQL Server Express LocalDB is a ultra-lite version of Express that operates in user mode and can be installed without configuration and with virtually no prerequisites. The LocalDB version of Express includes the programmability functions of other Express releases but does not allow in-memory (Online Transaction Processing.
Elements of SQL Server 2019
The SQL Server 2019 Installation Wizard enables you to select which of the Microsoft SQL Server components you wish to activate in your installation. These elements include:
Database Engine
The Database Engine is the core of SQL Server's services for computing, holding, and protecting data. The Database Engine is used for replication, search, utilities for managing relational and XML data, supporting in-database analytics, integrating PolyBase for working with external data sources such as Hadoop, and Machine Learning Services for analyzing Microsoft SQL Server 2019's relational data with Python and R scripts.
SSAS
SQL SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) is an Online Analytical Processing and data mining toolset for extracting useful insights from data dispersed across separate databases or contained in various files or tables.
SSRS
SSRS offers a collection of local tools and services that enable organizations to build, share, and administer tabular, matrix, graphical, and unstructured reports, both mobile and paginated. You can create device-aware mobile reports with the Mobile Report Publisher app and utilize integrated Power BI apps for handheld devices to access the data processed in SSRS.
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
SQL Server Integration Services is a collection of programmable objects and zero-code graphical tools for extracting and transforming data from multiple sources. Extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes can be applied to XML data files, text files, and relational data sources. Integration Services can be utilized for copying or downloading files, loading data warehouses, cleansing and mining data, and controlling Microsoft SQL Server data.
Master Data Services (MDS)
Master Data Services is SQL Server's Master Data Management (MDM) platform that enables organizations to build a centralized visualization of corporate-wide data, synchronizing data silos to eliminate redundancies and versioning data organization models to maintain consistency. An Excel add-in makes it easy to publish the master data set throughout an organization.
In-Database Machine Learning Services
SQL Server 2019 Machine Learning Services allows you to run Python and R scripts with relational data without transferring data outside SQL Server or across the network. The open-source Microsoft Python and R packages can be used for predictive analytics and machine learning.
New and Enhanced Features of Microsoft SQL Server 2019
The most prominent new feature for SQL Server 2019 is Big Data Clusters, which allows you to analyze big data from Transact-SQL or Spark for machine learning and AI solutions. Other new or enhanced features impact important technologies including the SQL Server Database Engine, feature parity between Microsoft SQL Server on Linux and Microsoft SQL Server on Windows, SSAS, and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).
Big Data Clusters
trusted execution environment Server 2019 debuts the Big Data Cluster, a cluster of Linux containers orchestrated by Kubernetes. The Big Data Cluster enables you to implement and run scalable clusters in interrelated SQL Server, Apache Spark, and Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) containers managed by Kubernetes. Because these components can run concurrently, The Big Data Clusters feature permits you to process big data from Transact-SQL or Apache Spark and makes it simpler to aggregate and process your SQL Server relational data with unstructured big data. Implementation scenarios include virtualized data for processing outside data silos without transferring or replicating the target data, data lakes created with HDFS pools to hold big data, and scale-out data marts to spread data from a variety of sources across multiple data pool nodes. You can utilize Apache Spark or built-in R, Python, Scala, and Java tools in SQL Server 2019 for AI tasks on the data deposited in HDFS storage pools.
Other Enhancements to the SQL Server 2019 Database Engine
Additional enhancements to the Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Database Engine cover smart databases, the developer environment, security, high-availability (HA), and Linux/Windows feature parity. Improvements to the Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Database Engine include:
Enhancements to SQL Server 2019 Reporting Services (SSRS)
Enhancements to SQL Server 2019 Reporting Services (SSRS) include:
Progent's SQL Server experts can help your company to migrate your data and apps, set up test environments to validate SQL Server 2019's capability to run your business-critical workloads, simplify management, create and implement an enterprise-wide cybersecurity strategy that meets government and industry requirements, accommodate mobile devices, and create and test a disaster recovery/business continuity strategy that incorporates the advanced HA features incorporated in Microsoft SQL Server 2019.
IT consulting services available from Progent for Microsoft SQL Server 2019 include:
If you require immediate online assistance from a Microsoft-certified consultant, see Progent's Remote Network Support.
Learn more about Progent's Consulting Services for Microsoft .NET Server Platforms.