'Graph extensions in SQL Server 2017 will facilitate users in linking different pieces of connected data to help gather powerful insights and increase operational agility. Graphs are well suited for applications where relationships are important, such as fraud detection, risk management, social networks, recommendation engines, predictive analysis, dependence analysis, and IoT applications. In this session we will demonstrate how you can use SQL Graph extensions to build your application using graph data. Download SQL Server 2017: Now on Windows, Linux, and Docker (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-vnext-including-Linux).'...
https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Data-Science/Microsoft-Data-Amp-2017/SQL-Server-2017-Building-applications-using-graph-data?wt.mc_id=AID520629_EML_5040093
'Microsoft is excited to announce a new preview for the next version of SQL Server! We disclosed a name for this next release, SQL Server 2017, today at the Microsoft Data Amp event. Community Technology Preview (CTP) 2.0 is the first production-quality preview of SQL Server 2017, and it is available on both Windows and Linux. In this preview, we added a number of new capabilities, including the ability to run advanced analytics using Python in a parallelized and highly scalable way, the ability to store and analyze graph data, and other capabilities that help you manage SQL Server for high performance and uptime, including the Adaptive Query Processing family of intelligent database features and resumable online indexing.
In addition to all these great new features we are excited to announce a world record in the TPC-H 1TB data warehousing workload(non-clustered). The benchmark was achieved with SQL Server 2017 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and HPE Prolliant server hardware, beating SQL Server 2016 on the same hardware handily. This is just the first of many anticipated performance benchmarks for SQL Server 2017 on Linux and Windows, demonstrating SQL Server’s industry leading performance. When taken in conjunction with the fact that SQL Server has had the least vulnerabilities of any major database over the last 7 years in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) vulnerability database, SQL Server 2017 on Windows and Linux is the best database for your Mission Critical application and data warehouse workloads.
You can try the preview in your choice of development and test environments now.'...
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2017/04/19/sql-server-2017-community-technology-preview-2-0-now-available/?wt.mc_id=AID520629_EML_5040093
'We are excited to announce the availability of the preview for SQL Server Command Line Tools (sqlcmd and bcp) on Mac OS.
The sqlcmd utility is a command-line tool that lets you submit T-SQL statements or batches to local and remote instances of SQL Server. The utility is extremely useful for repetitive database tasks such as batch processing or unit testing.
The bulk copy program utility (bcp), bulk copies data between an instance of Microsoft SQL Server and a data file in a user-specified format. The bcp utility can be used to import large numbers of new rows into SQL Server tables or to export data out of tables into data files.'...
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2017/04/03/sql-server-command-line-tools-for-mac-preview-now-available/?WT.mc_id=AID522292_EML_5016636
'Upgrading your software can be daunting, we know. The fast pace of business makes it easy to tell yourself, “I’ll do it later when I have time.” We get it! But here are five key reasons to make time to upgrade to SQL Server 2016, which was named DBMS of the Year in 2016 by DBengines.com.'...
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2017/04/05/the-top-5-reasons-to-upgrade-to-sql-server-2016/?WT.mc_id=AID522292_EML_5016636
'Use this script to get the list of all Indexes in your database and how effective they are.'...
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/scripts/index/155686/?utm_source=SSC&utm_medium=pubemail
'These days the request becoming quite common in many companies is to retire unused SSRS reports. This may take quite amount of time if you want to do this manually, especially in some companies dealing with hundreds of reports, organized under different sub folders. This article will provide a step-by-step guide to obsolete un-used reports programmatically by updating with custom message inside the report RDL’s.
Getting Started
In order to follow the examples, you will need to have SQL Server Reporting Services installed and configured. The code folder contains usagemetrics.sql, DummyReport.rdl, ObsoleteReportsFromFile.rss, and reports.txt file.
Identifying Un-used Reports
SSRS Reports Usage metrics can be derived by Querying Report Server DB. Use the below T-SQL to derive the usage counts. If your report server is configured to store 1 year of reports execution history, we can use a specific date to filter the usage metrics. In my query I am checking all the metrics from the beginning of 2016.'...
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Reporting+Services+(SSRS)/155104/?utm_source=SSC&utm_medium=pubemail
'Microsoft does not document or support querying the ReportServer database, but it contans a lot of useful information about SSRS reports. A previous article, Dynamic SSRS report documentation via a ReportServer.dbo.Catalog query, demonstrated how to query the ReportServer.dbo.Catalog to generate live documentation of SSRS reports.
In this article we will query the ReportServer.dbo.ExecutionLog table to determine which reports have been executed in the past month and which have not.
By default, SQL Server only stores 30 days of data in the ReportServer.dbo.ExecutionLog table. For more information on how to configure execution logging see How to Audit Report Execution in SSRS by Peter Avila.
Reports Executed During Past 30 Days: Paste the following query of the ReportServer.dbo.ExecutionLog into a SQL Server Managment Studio query panel...'...
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Reporting+Services+(SSRS)/155835/?utm_source=SSC&utm_medium=pubemail
'While SQL Server 2016 runs faster, SQL Server 2017 promises to run faster and empower customers to run smarter with intelligent database features like the ability to run advanced analytics using Python in a parallelized and highly scalable way, the ability to store and analyze graph data, adaptive query processing and resumable online indexing allowing customers to deploy it on platform of their choice (Windows or Linux). SQL Server is one of the most popular DBMS among SQL Community and is a preferred choice of RDBMS among customers and ISVs owing to its strong community support. In SQL Server 2017 CTP 2.0, we have released several customer delighters and community driven enhancements based on the learnings and feedback from customers and community from in-market releases of SQL Server.'...
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sql_server_team/sql-server-community-driven-enhancements-in-sql-server-2017/