What I love about MS SQL Server 2012?

Today I will talk about the new and enhanced features of SQL 2012 that make me love it more. MS SQL 2012 has come up with lots of great features and enhancements like: development enhancement, performance enhancements etc. Although all features of SQL 2012 are great but I would like to share my favorite features with you. I am going to tell you why I love those features. So let's discuss.

 AlwaysOn: This feature is a better and improved version of database mirroring. AlwaysOn availability feature provides high availability and disaster recovery solutions for a database. In this technology, database maintains multiple copies of your database that are being refreshed time to time. If one database fails, you can always use another secondary database. In traditional database mirroring you can manage only one database and if that also fails then you know what that means. You can make only one mirror copy of database in mirroring but in AlwaysOn you can have multiple copies of database.

Power View: It is a new feature in SQL Server 2012. Power View is basically a data reporting tool designed for business users. To work with this tool, SharePoint 2010 should be installed on your system. This tool uses data models based on PowerPivot workbooks that allows user to browse and present their data any time. It provides great presentation experience because of its highly interactive and user friendly features. User can share his views with other people through presentations. Power View provides many more great features like: visual design experience, filtering data, sorting data, multiple view report etc. This is really an amazing tool, you should try it.

Contained Database: Before the release of SQL 2012, migration to a new database was never easy because of the dependency of database on SQL Server instance. To solve this issue Microsoft has introduced a new feature named 'contained database' in its latest release of SQL 2012. Contained database is designed to reduce the dependencies of a database and making it easier to migrate. Since contained database is isolated from SQL Server Instance database so it is makes the process of migration a bit easier. Using contained database user is authenticated at database level, so no logins are requires for SQL Server instance.

DQS( Data Quality Services): DQS allows you to create a knowledge base to check quality of your data source. The main purpose of DQS is to check the quality and integrity of your data. You can also resolve data quality issues that you may find like data duplication, data cleansing, proofing etc.

Supports Windows Server Core: Windows Server Core is an GUI less version of Windows, designed to reduce maintenance effort and increase security of the server. MS SQL 2012 supports Windows Server core. Window Server Core takes less memory space, require fewer patches and improve security.