SQL Server 2008
SQL Server 2008 (formerly code named "Katmai") was released on August 6, 2008 and aims to make data management self-tuning, self organizing, and self maintaining with the development of SQL Server Always On technologies, to provide near-zero downtime. SQL Server 2008 also includes support for structured and semi-structured data, including digital media formats for pictures, audio, video and other multimedia data. In current versions, such multimedia data can be stored as BLOBs (binary large objects), but they are generic bit streams. Intrinsic awareness of multimedia data will allow specialized functions to be performed on them. According to Paul Flessner, senior Vice President, Server Applications, Microsoft Corp., SQL Server 2008 can be a data storage back end for different varieties of data: XML, email, time/calendar, file, document, spatial, etc. as well as perform search, query, analysis, sharing, and synchronization across all data types. Other new data types include specialized date and time types and a Spatial data type for location-dependent data. Better support for unstructured and semi-structured data is provided using the new FILE STREAM data type, which can be used to reference any file stored on the file system. Structured data and metadata about the file is stored in SQL Server database, whereas the unstructured component is stored in the file system. Such files can be accessed both via Win32 file handling APIs as well as via SQL Server using T-SQL; doing the latter accesses the file data as a BLOB. Backing up and restoring the database backs up or restores the referenced files as well. SQL Server 2008 also natively supports hierarchical data, and includes T-SQL constructs to directly deal with them, without using recursive queries. The Full-text search functionality has been integrated with the database engine. According to a Microsoft technical article, this simplifies management and improves performance. Spatial data will be stored in two types. A GEOMETRY or planar) data type represents geospatial data which has been projected from its native, spherical, coordinate system into a plane. A "Round Earth" data type (GEOGRAPHY) uses an ellipsoidal model in which the Earth is defined as a single continuous entity which does not suffer from the singularities such as the international dateline, poles, or map projection zone "edges". Approximately 70 methods are available to represent spatial operations for the Open Geospatial Consortium Simple Features for SQL, Version 1.1. SQL Server includes better compression features, which also helps in improving scalability. It enhanced the indexing algorithms and introduced the notion of filtered indexes. It also includes Resource Governor that allows reserving resources for certain users or workflows. It also includes capabilities for transparent encryption of data (TDE) as well as compression of backups. SQL Server 2008 supports the ADO.NET Entity Framework and the reporting tools, replication, and data definition will be built around the Entity Data Model. SQL Server Reporting Services will gain charting capabilities from the integration of the data visualization products from Dundas Data Visualization, Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft. On the management side, SQL Server 2008 includes the Declarative Management Framework which allows configuring policies and constraints, on the entire database or certain tables, declaratively. The version of SQL Server Management Studio included with SQL Server 2008 supports IntelliSense for SQL queries against a SQL Server 2008 Database Engine. SQL Server 2008 also makes the databases available via Windows PowerShell providers and management functionality available as Cmdlets, so that the server and all the running instances can be managed from Windows Power Shell. The final SQL Server 2008 service pack (10.00.6000, Service Pack 4) was released on September 30, 2014.
SQL Server 2008 R2
SQL Server 2008 R2 (10.50.1600.1, formerly code named "Kilimanjaro") was announced at TechEd 2009, and was released to manufacturing on April 21, 2010. SQL Server 2008 R2 adds certain features to SQL Server 2008 including a master data management system branded as Master Data Services, a central management of master data entities and hierarchies. Also Multi Server Management, a centralized console to manage multiple SQL Server 2008 instances and services including relational databases, Reporting Services, Analysis Services & Integration Services. SQL Server 2008 R2 includes a number of new services, including Power Pivot for Excel and SharePoint, Master Data Services, StreamInsight, Report Builder 3.0, Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint, a Data-tier function in Visual Studio that enables packaging of tiered databases as part of an application, and a SQL Server Utility named UC (Utility Control Point), part of AMSM (Application and Multi-Server Management) that is used to manage multiple SQL Servers.The first SQL Server 2008 R2 service pack (10.50.2500, Service Pack 1) was released on July 11, 2011. The second SQL Server 2008 R2 service pack (10.50.4000, Service Pack 2) was released on July 26, 2012. The final SQL Server 2008 R2 service pack (10.50.6000, Service Pack 3) was released on September 26, 2014.
SQL Server 2012
At the 2011 Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) summit on October 11, Microsoft announced that the next major version of SQL Server (code named "Denali"), would be SQL Server 2012. It was released to manufacturing on March 6, 2012. SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 1 was released to manufacturing on November 9, 2012, and Service Pack 2 was released to manufacturing on June 10, 2014. It was announced to be the last version to natively support OLE DB and instead to prefer ODBC for native connectivity. SQL Server 2012's new features and enhancements include Always On SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances and Availability Groups which provides a set of options to improve database availability, Contained Databases which simplify the moving of databases between instances, new and modified Dynamic Management Views and Functions, Improbability enhancements including new spatial features, metadata discovery, sequence objects and the THROW statement, performance enhancements such as Column Store Indexes as well as improvements to On-Line and partition level operations and security enhancements including provisioning during setup, new permissions, improved role management, and default schema assignment for groups.
SQL Server 2014
SQL Server 2014 was released to manufacturing on March 18, 2014, and released to the general public on April 1, 2014. Until November 2013 there were two CTP revisions, CTP1 and CTP2. SQL Server 2014 provides a new in-memory capability for tables that can fit entirely in memory (also known as Hekaton). Whilst small tables may be entirely resident in memory in all versions of SQL Server, they also may reside on disk, so work is involved in reserving RAM, writing evicted pages to disk, loading new pages from disk, locking the pages in RAM while they are being operated on, and many other tasks. By treating a table as guaranteed to be entirely resident in memory much of the 'plumbing' of disk-based databases can be avoided. For disk-based SQL Server applications, it also provides the SSD Buffer Pool Extension, which can improve performance by cache between DRAM and spinning media. SQL Server 2014 also enhances the Always On (HADR) solution by increasing the readable secondaries count and sustaining read operations upon secondary-primary disconnections, and it provides new hybrid disaster recovery and backup solutions with Windows Azure, enabling customers to use existing skills with the on-premises version of SQL Server to take advantage of Microsoft's global datacenters. In addition, it takes advantage of new Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 capabilities for database application scalability in a physical or virtual environment. Microsoft provides three versions of SQL Server 2014 for downloading: the one that runs on Microsoft Azure, the SQL Server 2014 CAB, and SQL Server 2014 ISO. SQL Server 2014 SP1, consisting primarily of bugfixes, was released on May 15, 2015.
Builds
| Version | RTM (no SP) | SP1 | SP2 | SP3 | SP4 | SP5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SQL Server 2014 | 12.0.2000.8 | 12.0.4100.1 | ||||
| SQL Server 2012 | 11.0.2100.60 | 11.0.3000.0 | 11.0.5058.0 | |||
| SQL Server 2008 R2 | 10.50.1600.1 | 10.50.2500.0 / 10.51.2500.0 | 10.50.4000.0 / 10.52.4000.0 | 10.50.6000.34 | ||
| SQL Server 2008 | 10.0.1600.22 | 10.0.2531.0 | 10.0.4000.0 | 10.0.5500.0 | 10.0.6000.29 | |
| SQL Server 2005 | 9.0.1399.06 | 9.0.2047 | 9.0.3042 | 9.0.4035 | 9.0.5000 | |
| SQL Server 2000 | 8.0.194 | 8.0.384 | 8.0.532 | 8.0.760 | 8.0.2039 | |
| SQL Server 7.0 | 7.0.623 | 7.0.699 | 7.0.842 | 7.0.961 | 7.0.1063 | |
| SQL Server 6.5 | 6.50.201 | 6.50.213 | 6.50.240 | 6.50.258 (SP3a) | 6.50.281 | 6.50.416 (SP5a) |
| SQL Server 6.0 | 6.0.121 | 6.0.124 | 6.0.139 | 6.0.151 |