SQL Server 2022 What is New?

SQL Server 2022 was announced yesterday at Microsoft’s Ignite Conference. Here are some of the items that caught our attention. This includes SQL Server 2022 Announcements and other announcements around the Microsoft Data Platform.

Bob Ward blessed the community with this presentation over his three favorite features..

SQL Server 2022 First Thoughts

The following is a summary of some of my favorite announcements with some initial thoughts.

Bi-directional HA/DR to Azure SQL – With SQL Server 2022, you can use Distributed Availability Groups to have HA/DR replica in Azure Managed Instance. You can failover your Read/Write Traffic. You have to do a backup and a restore into SQL Server 2022 to go back from the Azure Managed Instance. Hopefully, Distributed Availability Group failovers will be bi-directional in the near future.

Query Store Enhancements (QDS) – SQL Server 2022 allows you to have separate data for your readable replicas. QDS will now be on by default for new databases. QDS provides the ability to utilize hints to easily shape query plans with no code changes.

Intellectual Query Processing Improvements (IQP)- IQP has new enhancements to memory grant feedback to persist data instead of requiring changes only to happen when queries are executed frequently.IQP has more improvements without changing your code. These improvements include changes with MAXDOP and CE Feeback. The query can detect and change how many threads are used so large tables can have more threads as needed. Saving the best for last. Progress to help smooth out parameter sniffing will also be included in SQL 2022. Looking forward to seeing how this is like Automatic Tuning Automatic Plan Correction introduced in SQL Server 2017.

Free SQL Assessments for Azure VMs – If you are using an Azure VM to host an instance of SQL Server you might be interested in the new free assessment offering coming out of Ignite.

New Class Ebdsv5 Virtual Machines – Now 30% better price on performance compared to the previous greatest option. Remote I/O Throughput goes up to 2,500 MBPS so less memory could be required due to higher read throughput.

SQL Server 2022 integrates with Azure Synapse Link and Azure Purview – Being able to manage data discovery within both on-premise and the cloud is a great win! The same could be said for breaking down silos to help you get the most value out of your data.

SQL Server Ledger – Looks like the Azure SQL Database Ledger which was announced in May of this year is coming to SQL Server 2022. Always excited to see the most secure relational database platform increase its security features., Microsoft is bringing the same blockchain capabilities to SQL Server.

SQL Server 2022 What Is Next?

If you want to get an early jump on SQL Server 2022 you can apply to enter the Early Adoption Program (EAP). I also recommend signing up for PASS Member Summit Conference that starts next week. I will be giving a 101 Fundamentals talk on Performance Tuning. It’s 100% FREE to attend.

What is your favorite feature of SQL Server 2002? What do you wish was added to the feature list? Let us know in the comments.