SQL Server 2017, the next major release of the SQL Server database, has been available as a community preview for around 8 months, but now the first full-featured release candidate is available for public preview. For those looking to do data science with data in SQL Server, there are a number of new features compared to SQL Server 2017 which might be of interest:
- SQL Server 2017 will be supported on Linux, specifically on Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu (as well as within a Docker container). You can read some of the backstory on how SQL Server came to Linux here.
- The new SQL Server Machine Learning Services will provide in-database analytics in both the R and — new to SQL Server 2017 — Python languages.
- There are several improvements to the in-database R integration (previously known as "R Services" in SQL Server 2016). These includes a new package management system, real-time in-database scoring of predictive models, and an updated R engine.
SQL Server 2017 Release Candidate 1 is available for download now. For more details on these and other new features in this release, check out the link below.
SQL Server Blog: SQL Server 2017 CTP 2.1 now available