Book Image

SQL Server 2017 Developer's Guide

Book Image

SQL Server 2017 Developer's Guide

Overview of this book

Microsoft SQL Server 2017 is a milestone in Microsoft's data platform timeline, as it brings in the power of R and Python for machine learning and containerization-based deployment on Windows and Linux. This book prepares you for advanced topics by starting with a quick introduction to SQL Server 2017's new features. Then, it introduces you to enhancements in the Transact-SQL language and new database engine capabilities before switching to a different technology: JSON support. You will take a look at the security enhancements and temporal tables. Furthermore, the book focuses on implementing advanced topics, including Query Store, columnstore indexes, and In-Memory OLTP. Toward the end of the book, you'll be introduced to R and how to use the R language with Transact-SQL for data exploration and analysis. You'll also learn to integrate Python code into SQL Server and graph database implementations as well as the deployment options on Linux and SQL Server in containers for development and testing. By the end of this book, you will be armed to design efficient, high-performance database applications without any hassle.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Introduction to SQL Server 2017
Index

Summary


In this chapter, you learned how to create and manipulate with graph database objects in SQL Server 2017. You are now familiar with node and edge tables, and the new MATCH clause.

Microsoft's decision to support graph capabilities as an integrated part of SQL Server 2017 is very good, and you can start to consider graphs in your future database solutions. However, the current scope of graph capabilities is not good enough for serious database solutions. Some very important features are missing and workarounds that use recursive queries are not a good starting point for graph adventures.

The main reason for missing features is the missing time between two SQL Server versions, and Microsoft uses this to roll out new technologies in a nice, incremental manner, so we can expect to see significant extensions and improvements in graph capabilities in the next version.

In the last chapter of this book, you will learn how to install and manage SQL Server 2017 on Windows containers and Linux...