SQL Server 2016 Preview...

I am not sure if I have dug enough into SQL Server 2014 but SQL server 2016 Preview is coming this summer. The pace at which technology has been evolving in DB/BI space has been amazing.
Here are some of the Features mentioned to be available in SQL Server 2016:
1. Always Encrypted:
2. Stretch Database
3. Real Time Operational Analytics & In-Memory OLTP
4. Built-in Advanced Analytics, PolyBase and Mobile BI

Additional capabilities in SQL Server 2016 include:

• Additional security enhancements for Row-level Security and Dynamic Data Masking to round out our security investments with Always Encrypted.
• Improvements to AlwaysOn for more robust availability and disaster recovery with multiple synchronous replicas and secondary load balancing.
• Native JSON support to offer better performance and support for your many types of your data.
• SQL Server Enterprise Information Management (EIM) tools and Analysis Services get an upgrade in performance, usability and scalability.
• Faster hybrid backups, high availability and disaster recovery scenarios to backup and restore your on-premises databases to Azure and place your SQL Server AlwaysOn secondaries in Azure.

Please refer to the following link for the full details:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/dataplatforminsider/archive/2015/05/04/sql-server-2016-public-preview-coming-this-summer.aspx

In Memory Analytics - Part 2

In my earlier blog post i had written about In Memory Analytics and the tools provided by Microsoft which uses in memory analytics. This segment is becoming increasingly popular with new offerings from different companies. I guess with the cost of memory and disk space storage becoming cheaper there could be a plenty of in memory product offerings. One Such Product offering which is outside of Microsoft is from Salient , http://www.salient.com/our-technology/. To quote from the website:
"Salient has pioneered a new business intelligence paradigm that merges the unique thought process of each individual with advanced data visualization. This enables everyone – non-technical as well as technical – to interrogate the data in order to discern patterns, trends and outliers. Users can understand the relationships among activities, costs and outcomes – and discover root cause in seconds."
One of their offerings is Salient ETL which allows one to move from Design to Automation in 3 easy steps. It sounds very interesting.
From Design to Automation in 3 Easy Steps:

•Design based on business objectives
•Map source data to the logical design
•Automate updates of the data feeds
In Summary in the year 2013 there going to be lot of offerings in the In memory analytics and Big Data Domain.