SQL 2019 - Interesting Features

SQL 2019 - Interesting Features (Link)

I have a lot of bias for SQL Server. Some SQL 2019 features are awesome. The things I liked are
Query heterogeneous databases with Polybase (Polybase feature was there in 2016 too but the databases supported is not as many as I see now)

• Polybase provides in SQL Server 2019 through a concept called an EXTERNAL TABLE.
• External tables are just like SQL Server tables except SQL Server only stores the metadata of the table definition
• Polybase uses ODBC drivers to connect to sources such as Oracle, Teradata, MongoDB, and SQL Server.

SQL Datalake capability

• Support for SQL, NoSQL
• Support for ML Engine
• Support for HDFS

These are promising features. Obviously, there will be some product limitations in the early stages.
Highlights

• Support for unstructured data
• Heterogenous database support
• Schema on read is achieved with external tables
• SQL wrapper to query both different databases / unstructured data
• Integration with HDFS
• ML APIs / Visualization features

Very good move to accommodate / position SQL as an Integration Database engine for heterogenous/unstructured/structured data

Happy Learning!!!