SQL Server 2012 Release Candidate Released

Last week there was an important release of a new preview version of SQL Server 2012 database server , which was previously known under the code name Denali. The new preliminary version has the status of Release Candidate (release candidate), which, firstly, means its readiness for industrial testing, and secondly, it tells us about the full-featured status of the product, which at this stage is already equipped with all the features that will be available in the final release .

Talking about innovations in SQL Server 2012 can be very long, the new generation of the database contains a lot of innovations in all components. A small part of the innovations is briefly described in this article dedicated to the first announcement of Denali.
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Download SQL Server 2012 Release Candidate 0 (RC0) from here .

If we summarize only those innovations that have been included in the release candidate since the last test version of CTP3, then we can single out the following main areas that have been focused on:

• significant improvements in high availability mechanisms;
• increased productivity, including in virtual environments and private cloud infrastructures;
• New Power View functionality;
• In addition to the new Data Quality Services and Master Data Services for heterogeneous infrastructures, Change Data Capture functionality has been added for Oracle databases;
• work on increasing productivity brought in the new release improvements in SQL Server Management Studio for working with the Windows Azure cloud platform;
• and in addition, developers have been offered a new version of the database - SQL Express LocalDB - a lightweight version of the database with support for all functions, but working in the user rights space and practically not requiring configuration and installation.

The main announcement and much more information about the new product can be found in the developers blog at this link . You can learn more about the product on the official website www.microsoft.com/sqlserver . Documentation on the new version of the product is here . Release notes are available here .

You can download the draft of the book “Introducing Microsoft SQL Server Code Name“ Denali ”at this link .