SQL Server Team announced the general availability of SQL Server 2016, the world’s fastest and most price-performant database for HTAP (Hybrid Transactional and Analytical Processing) with updateable, in-memory columnstores and advanced analytics through deep integration with R Services. Software applications can now deploy sophisticated analytics and machine learning models in the database resulting in 100x or more speedup in time to insight, compared to deployments of such models outside of the database.

There is a lot of buzz around SQL Server 2016.  Microsoft announced the release of SQL Server 2016 at the Microsoft Ignite Conference during the first week of May 2015. Since that time a number of Community Technical Previews (CTPs) have come out.  It will not be too long until SQL Server 2016 will be fully baked and ready for shipping.

Always Encrypted

With the Always Encrypted feature enabled your SQL Server data will always be encrypted within SQL Server. Access to encrypted data will only be available to the applications calling SQL Server. Always Encrypted enables client application owners to control who gets access to see their applications confidential data. It does this by allowing the client application to be the one that has the encryption key. That encryption key is never passed to SQL Server. By doing this you can keep those nosey Database or Windows Administrators from poking around sensitive client application data In-Flight or At-Rest. This feature will now allow you to sleep at night knowing your confidential data stored in a cloud managed database is always encrypted and out of the eyes of your cloud provider.

Dynamic Data Masking

If you are interested in securing your confidential data so some people can see it, while other people get an obscured version of confidential data then you might be interested in dynamic data masking. With dynamic data masking you can obscure confidential columns of data in a table to SQL Server for users that are not authorized to see the all the data. With dynamic data masking you can identify how the data will be obscured. For instance say you accept credit card numbers and store them in a table, but you want to make sure your help desk staff is only able to see the last four digits of the credit card number. By setting up dynamic data masking you can define a masking rules so unauthorized logins can only read the last four digits of a credit card number, whereas authorized logins can see all of the credit card information.

JSON Support

JSON stands for Java Script Object Notation. With SQL Server 2016 you can now interchange JSON data between applications and the SQL Server database engine. By adding this support Microsoft has provided SQL Server the ability to parse JSON formatted data so it can be stored in a relation format. Additionally, with JSON support you can take relational data, and turn it into JSON formatted data. Microsoft has also added some new functions to provided support for querying JSON data stored in SQL Server. Having these additional JSON features built into SQL Server should make it easier for applications to exchange JSON data with SQL Server.

Multiple TempDB Database Files

It has been a best practice for a while to have more than one tempdb data file if you are running on a multi-core machine. In the past, up through SQL Server 2014, you always had to manually add the additional tempdb data files after you installed SQL Server. With SQL Server 2016 you can now configure the number of tempdb files you need while you are installing SQL Server. Having this new feature means you will no longer need to manually add additional tempdb files after installing SQL Server.

PolyBase

PolyBase allows you to query distributed data sets. With the introduction of PolyBase you will be able to use Transact SQL statements to query Hadoop, or SQL Azure blob storage. By using PolyBase you can now write adhoc queries to join relational data from SQL Server with semi-structured data stored in Hadoop, or SQL Azure blob storage. This allows you to get data from Hadoop without knowing the internals of Hadoop. Additionally you can leverage SQL Server’s on the fly column store indexing to optimize your queries against semi-structured data. As organizations spread data across many distributed locations, PolyBase will be a solution for them to leverage SQL Server technology to access their distributed semi-structured data.

Query Store

If you are into examining execution plans than you will like the new Query Store feature. Currently in versions of SQL Server prior to 2016 you can see existing execution plans by using dynamic management views (DMVs). But, the DMVs only allow you to see the plans that are actively in the plan cache. You can’t see any history for plans once they are rolled out of the plan cache. With the Query Store feature, SQL Server now saves historical execution plans. Not only that but it also saves the query statistics that go along with those historical plans. This is a great addition and will allow you to now track execution plans performance for your queries over time.

Row Level Security

With Row Level Security the SQL database engine will be able to restrict access to row data, based on a SQL Server login. Restricting rows will be done by filter predicates defined in inline table value function. Security policies will ensure the filter predicates get executed for every SELECT or DELETE operation. Implementing row level security at the database layer means application developers will no longer need to maintain code to restrict data from some logins, while allowing other logins to access all the data. With this new feature, when someone queries a tables that contains row level security they will not even know whether or not any rows of data were filtered out.

R Comes to SQL Server

With Microsoft’s purchase of Revolution Analytics they are now able to incorporate R to support advance analytics against big data right inside of SQL Server. By incorporating R processing into SQL Server, data scientists will be able to take their existing R code and run it right inside the SQL Server database engine. This will eliminate the need to export your SQL server data in order to perform R processing against it. This new feature brings R processing closer to the data.

Stretch Database

The Stretch Database feature provides you a method to stretch the storage of your On-Premise database to Azure SQL Database. But having the stretch database feature allows you to have your most frequently accessed data stored On-Premise, while your less accessed data is off-site in an Azure SQL databases. When you enable a database to “stretch” the older data starts moving over to the Azure SQL database behind the scenes. When you need to run a query that might access active and historical information in a “stretched” database the database engine seamlessly queries both the On-Premise database as well as Azure SQL database and returns the results to you as if they had come from a single source. This feature will make it easy for DBA’s to archive information to a cheaper storage media without having to change any actual application code. By doing this you should be able to maximize performance on those active On-Premise queries.

Temporal Table

A temporal table is table that holds old versions of rows within a base table.  By having temporal tables SQL Server can automatically manage moving old row versions to the temporal table every time a row in the base table is updated.  The temporal table is physically a different table then the base table, but is linked to the base table.  If you’ve been building or plan to build your own method to managing row versioning then you might want to check out the new temporal tables support in SQL server 2016 before you go forth and build your own row versioning solution.

Are you looking for Cheap SQL Server 2016 Hosting? Finding a high quality Cheap SQL Server 2016 Hosting provider is crucial for your web application. Your SQL Server 2016 application can only run smooth if it will be hosted on a server which can provide a higher up time & plenty of computing resources. There’re thousands of web hosting providers which offer asp.net hosting, but choosing Cheap SQL Server 2016 Hosting provider is a time consuming task. To make your buying decision easy we’ve concluded 3 Best yet Cheap SQL Server 2016 Hosting providers which are reliable and offer affordable SQL Server 2016 Hosting so that every one can afford it.

Cheap SQL Server 2016 Hosting Recommendation

 

ASPHostPortal	DiscountService.biz	UKWindowsHostASP.NET
$1.00/month	$2.00/month	£3.00/month
Host 1 Site	Host 1 Site	Host 5 Sites
1 GB Disk Space	1 GB Disk Space	1 GB Disk Space
10 GB Bandwidth	10 GB Bandwidth	20 GB Bandwidth
Dedicated Application Pool	Dedicated Application Pool	Dedicated Application Pool
Support UTF-8 Domains	Support UTF-8 Domains	Support UTF-8 Domains
30-Days Money Back	30-Days Money Back	30-Days Money Back
Latest ASP.NET	Latest ASP.NET	Latest ASP.NET
Plesk Control Panel	Plesk Control Panel	Plesk Control Panel
Windows 2008/2012	Windows 2008/2012	Windows 2008/2012
SQL Server 2008/2012/2014	SQL Server 2008/2012/2014	SQL Server 2008/2012/2014
Latest MySql version	Latest MySql version	Latest MySql version
Visit	Visit	Visit

How to Choose Cheap SQL Server 2016 Hosting Recommendation

Reliability and Speed of Access

Not only should the web host be reliable and fast, it should guarantee its uptime (the time when it is functional). Look for a minimum uptime of 99%. In fact, even 99% is actually too low — it really should be 99.5% or higher. The host should provide some sort of refund (eg prorated refund or discount) if it falls below that figure. Note though that guarantees are often hard to enforce from your end — especially if the host denies there was any downtime. However, without that guarantee, the web host will have little incentive to ensure that its servers are running all the time.

Data Transfer (Traffic/Bandwidth)

Data transfer (sometimes loosely referred to as “traffic” or “bandwidth”) is the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors when they browse your site.

Don’t believe any commercial web host that advertises “unlimited bandwidth”. The host has to pay for the bandwidth, and if you consume a lot of it, they will not silently bear your costs. Many high bandwidth websites have found this out the hard way when they suddenly receive an exorbitant bill for having “exceeded” the “unlimited bandwidth”. Always look for details on how much traffic the package allows. I personally always stay clear of any host that advertises “unlimited transfer”, even if the exact amount is specified somewhere else (sometimes buried in their policy statements). Usually you will find that they redefine “unlimited” to be limited in some way.

In addition, while bandwidth provided is something you should always check, do not be unduly swayed by promises of incredibly huge amounts of bandwidth. Chances are that your website will never be able to use that amount because it will hit other limits, namely resource limits.

To give you a rough idea of the typical traffic requirements of a website, most new sites that don’t provide video or music on their site use less than 3 GB of bandwidth per month. Your traffic requirements will grow over time, as your site becomes more well-known, so you will need to also check their policy when you exceed your data transfer limit: is there a published charge per GB over the allowed bandwidth? Is the charge made according to actual usage or are you expected to pre-pay for a potential overage? It is better not to go for hosts that expect you to prepay for overages, since it is very hard to forsee when your site will exceed its bandwidth and by how much.

Disk space

For the same reason as bandwidth, watch out also for those “unlimited disk space” schemes. Many new sites (that don’t host videos or music) need less than 20 MB of web space, so even if you are provided with a host that tempts you with 100 GB (or “unlimited space”), be aware that you are unlikely to use that space, so don’t let the 100 GB space be too big a factor in your consideration when comparing with other web hosts. The hosting company is also aware of that, which is why they feel free to offer you that as a means of enticing you to host there.

Technical support

Does its technical support function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (often abbreviated 24/7), all year around? Note that I will not accept a host which does not have staff working on weekends or public holidays. You will be surprised at how often things go wrong at the most inconvenient of times. Incidentally, just because a host advertises that it has 24/7 support does not necessarily mean that it really has that kind of support. Test them out by emailing at midnight and on Saturday nights, Sunday mornings, etc. Check out how long they take to respond. Besides speed of responses, check to see if they are technically competent. You wouldn’t want to sign up with a host that is run by a bunch of salesmen who only know how to sell and not fix problems.

Email, Autoresponders, POP3, Mail Forwarding

If you have your own site, you will probably want to have email addresses at your own domain, like [email protected], etc. Does the host allow you to set up whatever email addresses you want on your domain, so that mail can be forwarded to your current email address, or placed into a mail box on your web hosting account itself? Can you set an email address to automatically reply to the sender with a preset message (called an autoresponder)? Can you retrieve your mail with your email software?

Control Panel

This is called various names by different hosts, but essentially, they all allow you to manage different aspects of your web account yourself. Typically, and at the very minimum, it should allow you to do things like add, delete, and manage your email addresses, and change passwords for your account. I will not sign up with a host where I have to go through their technical support each time I want to change a password or add/delete an email account. Such tasks are common maintenance chores that every webmaster performs time and time again, and it would be a great hassle if you had to wait for their technical support to make the changes for you.

Web Server and Operating System

Is the type of operating system and server important?

In general, most people will want to sign up for a web host offering a Unix-based system (like Linux, FreeBSD or OpenBSD) and running the Apache web server. Most web-based software assume your website is running on such a system, and you will usually experience fewer compatibility issues with it. There are also a lot of guides available on the Internet on configuring such systems, so finding help when you need it is easier as well.

In my opinion, the only time when you will want to use a Windows server is if you’re running Windows-specific programs, like ASP scripts. But even then, you’ll probably be better off looking for a PHP-equivalent, and using a Unix-based system.

Price

I was actually hesitant to list this, but I guess it’s futile not to. However, I would caution that while price is always a factor, you should realise (“realize” in US English) that you often get what you pay for, although it’s not necessarily true that the most expensive hosts are the best.

Monthly/Quarterly/Annual Payment Plans

Most web hosts allow you to select an annual payment plan that gives you a cheaper rate than if you were to pay monthly. My current personal preference is to pay monthly with all new web hosts until I’m assured of their reliability and honesty. Paying monthly allows me to switch web hosts quickly when I find that the current host does not meet my requirements: this way, I’m not tied down to a bad web host because I have prepaid for an entire year. I do this even if the new web host guarantees that they will refund the balance if I’m dissatisfied, since at the point I sign up, I have no assurance that they will honour their guarantee. Later (usually after a couple of years), when I’m satisfied with the host, I may change payment plans to the discounted annual plans.

Resellers?

Not all hosting companies own or lease their own web servers. Some of them are actually resellers for some other hosting company. The disadvantage of using a reseller is the possibility that you are dealing with people who don’t know much about the system they are selling and who take longer to help you (they have to transmit your technical support request to the actual hosting company for it to be acted upon). However, this also depends on both the reseller and the underlying hosting company. It is thus wise not to rule out all resellers; there are a number of reliable and fast ones who are actually quite good and cheap. In fact, a number of resellers sell the same packages cheaper than their original hosting company. If you find out that a particular company is a reseller, you will need to investigate both the reseller and the real hosting company.

International

If you don’t stay in the USA, you have the option of hosting your site with some local provider. The advantage here is the ease of dealing with them (they are after all easily accessible by phone call or a visit), your familiarity with the local laws and easy recourse to those laws should it be necessary. It should be your choice if your target audience is local (eg a local fast food delivery service). On the other hand, hosting it in USA has the advantage of faster access for what is probably the largest number of your overseas visitors (particularly if you have an English-speaking audience). You also have a large number of hosting companies to choose from, and as a result, cheaper prices too.