Chapter 4. Transact-SQL Enhancements
Each new SQL Server version brings numerous extensions and improvements to Transact-SQL language. Most of them are used to support newly added database engine features, but some of them address missing functionalities and limitations in previous versions. SQL Server 2016 comes up with many features that require extensions in Transact-SQL: temporal tables, JSON support, improvements for memory-optimized tables, columnstore tables and indexes, new security enhancements, and so on. They will be explored in detail in chapters dedicated to appropriate features.
This chapter covers small Transact-SQL features that can make developers' work more productive and enhancements that can increase the availability of database objects and enlarge the scope of existing functionalities, limited in the previous SQL Server versions.
This chapter is divided into the following three sections:
- New and enhanced Transact-SQL functions and expressions
- Enhanced...