SQL Server 2016 has been officially released, download now

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Microsoft has finally announced today that the SQL Server 2016 product is finally generally available. According to Microsoft, this is the fastest and most price-advanced database for Hybrid Transactional and Analytical Processing (HTAP).  In addition, the SQL Server 2016 also comes with advanced analytics through deep integration with R Services and updateable in-memory columnstores.

If you don’t know what SQL Server 2016 is, then we’ll tell you that this is a data platform which comes with many features and options. In addition, it is also more secure than the previous versions of the platform and it is also cheaper than using Oracle (a similar data platform). Microsoft said that if you will use its SQL Server 2016, you will pay one tenth of the price than when using Oracle to run similar workloads.

It seems that Microsoft is trying to attract the developers to their services while keeping them away from Oracle and other platforms. The company is promoting a special migration service supported by *FREE* SQL Server licenses. We remind you that this service was announced back in March 2016 and we are pretty sure that, by doing this, Microsoft has lured a good amount of customers from Oracle.

If you want to test out a sample of the SQL Server 2016, you can create a test environment by using an Azure SQL VM. However, keep in mind that the full version of SQL Server 2016 is available via the free developer edition.

It seems that Microsoft is quite aggressive lately with its products. We remind you that the company is now trying to “force” the Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 users to upgrade their computers to Windows 10 for FREE. Some users have already reported that their computers have been updated to Windows 10 without their knowledge. However, it is good to know that they have 30 days to go back to the previous Windows OS, so if this happened to you and you want to downgrade back to Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1, do it before the 30 days pass!

What are your thoughts about the new SQL Server 2016? Are you currently using Oracle to store your databases? Test out the new SQL Server 2016 right from the Microsoft page.

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