SQL Server 2019 is an advanced, on-premises version of Microsoft's flagship database platform. The headline feature of SQL Server 2019 is the introduction of the Big Data Cluster, a pattern of Linux containers orchestrated by Kubernetes. The Big Data Cluster feature enables massively scaled AI and machine learning tasks on the data stored in HDFS and SQL Server storage pools. SQL Server 2019 also includes additional improvements in the core SQL Server database engine such as feature parity on Linux hosts. Other important enhancements impact SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).
With SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 having reached end of support (EOS) status, migrating to a modern version of SQL Server makes sense for organizations concerned about compliance, compatibility, cybersecurity, and competitiveness. Progent has twenty years of experience planning, deploying, tuning, managing, and troubleshooting SQL Server solutions and can help companies of any size to prepare and execute an efficient migration to SQL Server 2019. Progent's Microsoft-certified SQL Server experts can help you evaluate the business case for upgrading to SQL Server 2019 and supply fast online or onsite access to experts in system design, application programming, database administration, and cybersecurity. Progent can help you deploy SQL Server 2019 on premises, in a private or public cloud, or in a hybrid network architecture.
You can engage Progent's consultants on an as-needed basis for tasks like design review or troubleshooting or you can receive comprehensive project management and co-management services to ensure your SQL Server 2019 initiative is completed on time and on budget. Progent offers the help of certified network security consultants, disaster recovery and business continuity planners, and database application developers to make sure your SQL Server 2019 deployment consistently delivers maximum business value.
Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants can also assist you to integrate SQL Server 2019 with other Microsoft products and services by providing expertise that includes Windows Server 2022 integration services, Windows Server 2019 consulting, Hyper-V virtualization planning, Exchange Server 2019 integration consulting, SharePoint 2019 consulting, hybrid integration with Azure cloud services, Skype for Business integration, Dynamics GP custom reporting help, and System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) consulting.
Progent's seasoned software developers can assist you to plan, create, pilot test, install, and troubleshoot applications that utilize SQL Server 2019 databases and Progent can provide expertise in data modeling, OLTP, Data Warehousing, Data Mining, ETL, tuning, availability, backup/recovery, analytics and reporting, and integration with Amazon Marketplace Web Service. To find out more about Progent's SQL Server development and debugging services, visit SQL Server application development services.
SQL Server 2019 Editions
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.
SQL Server 2019 Enterprise is the high-end edition of SQL Server 2019 and is intended for critical business applications requiring the most advanced levels of scale, availability, and performance. Compute power and memory supported per database match the operating system maximum, virtualization is unlimited, and relational database size can be up to 524 PB. High availability features unique to the Enterprise edition include Always On availability groups, online page and file restore, online index create and rebuild, resumable online index rebuilds, online schema change, fast recovery, mirrored backups, and hot add memory and CPU. Scalability and performance features for the Enterprise edition include in-memory database, resource governance, partitioned table parallelism, read ahead, automatic tuning, batch mode adaptive joins, plus row mode and memory grant feedback. The Enterprise edition of SQL Server 2019 also supports a richer set of Master Data Services, Data Warehousing, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, and Advanced Integration Services than other editions.
SQL Server 2019 Developer edition is essentially identical to the Enterprise edition, but its license restricts its use to development and testing. The Developer edition is not licensed for use as a production server. SQL Server 2019 Developer supports only a single client for SQL Server Distributed Replay.
SQL Server 2019 Standard edition is designed for departments and small organizations who require a basic, low-overhead platform for data management and BI. SQL Server 2019 Standard edition supports all the security features of SQL Server 2019 Enterprise, but compute capacity is limited to the smaller of 4 sockets or 24 cores. For each instance of SQL Server Database Engine, maximum memory for buffer pool is 128 GB and maximum memory-optimized data size is 32 GB. Unlike the Enterprise edition, the Standard edition of SQL Server 2019 does not support advanced R and Python integration and does not include Machine Learning Services, but supports the other programmability features as well as the management tools available with the Enterprise edition. Advanced features like transparent data encryption, accelerated database recovery, and Big Data Clusters are now included with the Standard edition.
SQL Server 2019 Web edition is an inexpensive option intended for web hosting companies. Compute capacity is limited to the lesser of 4 sockets or 16 cores, max buffer pool memory is 64 MB, and memory-optimized data size is 16 GB. Unlike the Standard edition of SQL Server 2019, SQL Server 2019 Web edition does not support Always On failover cluster instances, basic availability groups, hybrid backup or transactional replication to Windows Azure, or accelerated database recovery. The Web edition also does not support transparent database or backup encryption. You can profile SQL Server Web by using SQL Server Enterprise or SQL Server Standard editions, and SQL Server Web includes the other management tools included with the Standard edition. Data warehousing, Analysis Services, tabular and multidimensional models, BI Services, and some Reporting Services are not included.
SQL Server 2019 Express, available in several variants, is a free entry-level version of SQL Server designed for training or for creating desktop, small-server, and client applications that do not require an industrial-strength database. Compute capacity is limited to the lesser of 1 socket or 4 cores, max buffer pool memory is 1.41 MB, and memory-optimized data size is 352 MB. If applications created with SQL Server 2019 Express grow to require more capacity or additional features, you can upgrade seamlessly to more powerful editions of SQL Server. SQL Server 2019 Express with Advanced Services adds Basic R and SQL Graph integration, the distributed replay management tool, and SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT). SQL Server 2019 Express with Advanced Services can also host a SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) database. SQL Server Express LocalDB is a trimmed down version of Express that runs in user mode and can be installed without configuration and with virtually no prerequisites. SQL Server Express LocalDB shares all the programmability features of other Express variants but does not support in-memory OLTP.
Components of SQL Server 2019
The SQL Server 2019 Installation Wizard allows you to select which of the SQL Server components you want to include in your deployment. These components include:
SQL Server Database Engine
The Database Engine is the heart of SQL Server's services for processing, storing, and protecting data. The Database Engine is responsible for replication, full-text search, utilities for managing relational and XML data, integrating in-database analytics, integrating PolyBase for accessing external data sources like Hadoop, and Machine Learning Services for processing SQL Server's relational data with Python and R scripts.
Analysis Services
SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) is an OLAP and data mining resource for extracting useful information from data scattered across multiple databases or in various files or tables.
Reporting Services
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) offers a collection of on-premises utilities and services that allow you to build, share, and manage tabular, matrix, graphical, and free-form reports, both mobile and paginated. You can create responsive-design mobile reports with the Mobile Report Publisher app and use native Power BI apps for mobile devices to access the data you have in SQL Server Reporting Services.
Integration Services
Integration Services is a collection of programmable objects and zero-code graphical tools for migrating data. ETL operations can be performed on XML data files, flat files, and relational data sources. These services can be used for copying or downloading files, populating data warehouses, cleansing and mining data, and managing SQL Server objects and data.
Master Data Services
Master Data Services (MDS) is SQL Server's Master Data Management (MDM) platform that allows you to build a single, centralized view of enterprise data, synchronizing data sources to eliminate redundancies and versioning models to maintain consistency. An Excel add-in makes it easy to share the master data set throughout an organization.
In-Database Machine Learning Services
Machine Learning Services allows you to execute Python and R scripts with relational data sources without moving data outside SQL Server or across the network. The Microsoft Python and R packages can be used for predictive analytics and machine learning.
Standalone Machine Learning Server
The Standalone Machine Learning Server allows you to build distributed, scalable machine learning solutions on multiple platforms and use multiple enterprise data sources, including Linux and Hadoop. Because the Standalone Machine Learning Server is independent of SQL Server, you configure, protect, and access the R and Python environment via the OS and tools available on your standalone server. To use SQL Server data, you can create data source objects and connections.
New and Enhanced Features of SQL Server 2019
The headline new feature for SQL Server 2019 is Big Data Clusters, which allows you to work with very large sets of data and includes machine learning and AI support. Other new or enhanced features impact important areas including the SQL Server Database Engine, SQL Server on Linux feature parity with SQL Server on Windows, SQL Server Analysis Services, and SQL Server 2019 Reporting Services.
Introducing Big Data Clusters
SQL Server 2019 introduces Big Data Clusters, a feature that enables you to configure and run scalable clusters in interrelated SQL Server, Spark, and HDFS containers managed by Kubernetes. Because these components can run in parallel, Big Data Clusters technology allows you to process big data from Transact-SQL or Spark and makes it easy to combine and analyze your internal SQL Server relational data with big data. Deployment scenarios include data virtualization, data lakes, and scale-out data marts.
With SQL Server PolyBase, you can query data from virtualized external SQL Server, Oracle, Teradata, MongoDB, and ODBC data sources without having to move or copy the data. You can create a scalable HDFS storage pool to store big data that can be ingested from multiple external sources. Once the data lake is stored in HDFS in the Big Data Cluster, you can analyze and query the data and combine it with your relational data. You can increase data analysis performance by creating a data mart with scale-out compute and storage resources.
You can also distribute data from a wide range of sources across data pool nodes as a cache for ongoing analysis. You can use Spark or integrated R, Python, Scala, and Java tools in SQL Server 2019 for AI and machine learning tasks on the data stored in HDFS storage pools and data pools.
Additional Enhancements to the SQL Server 2019 Database Engine
Other enhancements to the SQL Server 2019 Database Engine cover intelligent databases, the developer experience, security, high-availability, and feature parity between Linux and Windows hosts. Improvements to the SQL Server 2019 Database Engine include:
Enhancements to SQL Server 2019 Reporting Services (SSRS)
Enhancements to SSRS 2019 include:
Progent can assist you to migrate your data and applications, set up pilot systems to verify SQL Server 2019's ability to run your business-critical applications, streamline management, design and implement a company-wide cybersecurity strategy that meets government and industry requirements, integrate mobile devices, and create a disaster recovery or business continuity plan that takes advantage of the advanced high-availability technology integrated into SQL Server 2019.
Consulting services available from Progent for SQL Server 2019 include:
If you need immediate online help from a Microsoft-certified consultant, see Progent's Online Network Support.
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