(Glenn’s Technical Insights… used to be part of our bi-weekly newsletter but we decided to make it a regular blog post instead so it can get more visibility. It covers interesting new hardware and software developments that are generally relevant for SQL Server).
SQL Server Management Studio 18.2 Released
On July 25, 2019, Microsoft released SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 18.2. This is mostly a bug fix release, but there are a few new features. These include:
- Intellisense support for the new OPTIMIZE_FOR_SEQUENTIAL_KEY option for indexes
- Added a completion time in messages to track when a query completed
- Added a new attribute in QueryPlan when the inline scalar UDF feature is enabled (ContainsInlineScalarTsqlUdfs)
- Added SMO support for Feature Restrictions. For more information on the feature itself, see Feature Restrictions
It is becoming more obvious that Microsoft is pushing Azure Data Studio as their preferred tool over SSMS. I don’t think SSMS is going to be abandoned any time soon, but it is clearly getting less love than Azure Data Studio.
Figure 1: SSMS 18.2
The complete release notes are here. You can download SSMS 18.2 here.
SQL Server 2014 Cumulative Updates
Even though SQL Server 2014 fell out of mainstream support on July 9, 2019, there is actually one final set of Cumulative Updates for SQL Server 2014 that were released on July 29, 2019. These include:
SQL Server 2014 SP3 CU4 (Build 12.0.6329.1)
SQL Server 2014 SP2 CU18 (Build 12.0.5687.1)
There are four public hotfixes in SQL Server 2014 SP2 CU18, and there are nineteen public hotfixes in SQL Server 2019 SP3 CU4. If you are on SQL Server 2014, you should get on SQL Server 2014 SP3 CU4 eventually, since that is going to be the last released build (unless there are any security updates between now and July 9, 2024, which is pretty likely).
There are also probably going to be the latest round of Cumulative Updates for SQL Server 2016 and SQL Server 2017 later this week, so keep your eye out for that.