PASS Summit 2013 Keynote Day One

Quentin Clark, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, kicked off this year’s PASS (Professional Association for SQL Server) Summit 2013 in Charlotte in front of 5,000 plus attendees. In Quinton’s keynote address he announced the availability of SQL Server 2014 CTP2.

SQL Server CTP2 is now feature-complete and it supports the new In-Memory OLP technology. The new In-Memory OLTP engine builds on their previous in-memory column store technology and it is delivered right along with SQL Server 2014. The In-Memory OLTP engine and can deliver a 30X performance improvement using existing hardware and software. There’s no need to learn new skills or buy any additional products in order to take advantage of it.

SQL Server Backup for Windows Azure Preview

Another big announcement that Quenton made in his PASS Summit 2013 keynote was the preview of SQL Server Backup for Windows Azure. The new SQL Server Backup for Windows Azure will support both encryption and compression. A demo showed how the Azure backup option was integrated into SQL Server 2014’s backup dialogs. Quenton also stated that the product would support older versions of SQL Server including SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, and SQL Server 2012.

Power Query, Power Map & Power QandA

Finally, Microsoft demonstrated how Power Query, Power Map, and Power QandA can help bring BI analytics to regular users with their integration into Office365. Power Query was previously code-named "Data Explorer" and Power Map was previously code-named Project "GeoFlow." Power QandA is a natural language query tool. You can preview these tools at PowerBI.com.

SQL Server Pushing Boundaries

A couple of things are definitely clear from today’s keynote. First, Microsoft is continuing to push ahead with cloud integration and second the breath of technology and the flexibility of solutions offered in the SQL Server product continues to push SQL Server into new areas or as keynote theme pointed out SQL Server is pushing the boundaries.

Related: Integrating SQL Server and the Cloud