This is in continuation of the promise we made to developers as part of SQL Server 2016 Service Pack 1 where we introduced the consistent programming surface area for all editions of SQL Server 2016 Service Pack 1. We made key improvements allowing a consistent programmability surface area for developers and organizations across SQL Server editions. This enabled our customers to build advanced applications that scale across editions and cloud as you grow. Developers and application partners can now build to a single programming surface when creating or upgrading intelligent applications, and use the edition which scales to the application’s needs.
SQL Server 2019 Standard Edition now has additional new capabilities.
- PolyBase Head Node - In previous releases of SQL Server, PolyBase Head Node had to be Enterprise Edition but with the advent of Big Data Cluster, we now support using Standard Edition for the PolyBase Head Node.
- Master instance for Big Data Cluster - The master instance of a Big Data Cluster can be Standard Edition instance.
- Accelerated Database Recovery - This gives you SQL Server the ability to recover predictably from a crash failure. For scenarios where Standard Edition is used, the RTO (Recovery Time Objective) is mostly never ZERO. However, there is a need to have a predictability in the recovery during a crash or even when a long running transaction is rolled back. This gives SQL Server Standard Edition that predictable behavior so that developers don't have to code their applications differently when running on different paid editions.
- Transparent Database Encryption - Transparent Database Encryption is a commonly used feature for encrypting SQL Server databases. In the post GDPR world, data-encryption-at-rest has become table stakes and non-negotiable. Allowing SQL Server Standard Edition to leverage TDE and along with EKM support ensures that our customers can stay compliant with new regulation when using SQL Server Standard Edition.
- Always Encrypted with secure enclaves - This expands upon Always Encrypted with in-place encryption and rich computations by enabling computations on plaintext data inside a server-side secure enclave. Again we provided this for Standard Edition as we believe that this feature would be important in helping adhere to various compliance policies.
- Data Discovery and Classification - The ability to classify columns with appropriate labels also helps with compliance especially around certain data privacy requirements. Hence, Standard Edition gets this capability. Discovering and classifying your most sensitive data (business, financial, healthcare, etc.) can play a pivotal role in your organizational information protection stature.
- Failover Server Benefit - While the new Software Assurance benefits are not specific to any release or edition, SQL Server 2019 can leverage a free Disaster Recovery replica with a SQL Server on an Azure Virtual Machine and also leverage a free Disaster Recovery replica benefit on-premises. This blog post has more details.
- Hybrid Buffer Pool - Persistent memory devices for database storage is coming up more and more in conversations that we have with customers. This new class of data storage re-defines what In-Memory means for a database platform. This feature will allow SQL Server 2019 Standard to outperform older release of SQL Server Standard edition while working with small to medium datawarehousing workloads.
- Persistent Memory Support - Standard edition will also have support for storing data and long files on persistent memory devices.
- Intelligent Query Processing - Intelligent Query Processing features like Approximate Count Distinct, Table Variable Deferred Compilation and Scalar UDF Inlining will be available on Standard Edition.
- SQL Assessment API - This SMO extension provides the ability to perform best practices checks against SQL Server instances. While this can target all releases of SQL Server, we don't restrict the use of this on any edition of SQL Server.
- UTF-8 Support - SQL Server 2019 now has support for storing data natively in UTF-8 format including Standard Edition.
- Java Language Runtime Integration - SQL Server 2019 introduced Java runtime integration to help run Java code within SQL Server which is available all editions of SQL Server.
If you have feedback about any other feature that should be included in Standard Edition, please file a feedback on https://aka.ms/sqlfeedback.
More information about the features available in different editions can be found here: http://aka.ms/sql2019editions
More information about What's New in SQL Server 2019 can be found here: https://aka.ms/sql2019whatsnew
