Preface

SQL Server releases seem to be coming thick and fast these days. Since SQL Server 2005, there has been a new release nearly every two years. Most of the new features have had a business intelligence focus since SQL Server 2005. There have been some features that the production DBA that looks after transaction systems would have an interest in, such as the AlwaysOn Availability Groups feature introduced with SQL Server 2012. This new release of SQL Server has some great new features that will capture the attention of the database administrator "in the trenches". You will learn how to improve the performance of your transactional databases by utilizing the new In-Memory OLTP features. Cloud has been a buzz word for a quite a long time, and SQL Server 2014 allows closer integration with the cloud using Microsoft Azure. You can create complete virtual machines with SQL Server installed in Microsoft Azure or you can simply store your database files in the Microsoft Azure cloud.