SQL Server 2012 Release Candidate Released

Last week, an important release of the new preliminary version of SQL Server 2012 , which was previously known under the code name Denali, took place. The new preliminary version is Release Candidate (release candidate), which, firstly, means its readiness for industrial testing, and secondly, tells us about the fully functional status of the product, which at this stage is already equipped with all the functions that will be available in the final release .

You can talk about innovations in SQL Server 2012 for a very long time; 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 on the first Denali announcement.

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 distinguish the following main areas that were focused on:

• significant improvements in high availability mechanisms;
• increased productivity, including in virtual environments and in private cloud infrastructures;
• new Power View functionality ;
• in addition to the new Data Quality Services and Master Data Services for heterogeneous infrastructures, the Change Data Capture functionality for Oracle databases was added;
• work on improving productivity brought improvements in SQL Server Management Studio for working with the Windows Azure cloud platform in the new release;
• and in addition, developers are 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 space of user rights and practically requiring no configuration or installation.

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

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