SQL Server is one of the more popular, albeit more expensive, relational database management systems. In this post, we'll talk about why a database is not a data warehouse and whether Microsoft SQL Server could work as a data warehouse. Couldn't you use your production database for your analytics and get that data-driven boost? Say you already have a Microsoft (MS) SQL Server database. Good thinking: A McKinsey report estimates that businesses that leverage customer analytics are 23x more likely to acquire new customers faster than their competitors! And they're 19x more likely to have above-average customer profitability. So you're at the stage where you're thinking about your company's data management strategy. If you'd like to follow and vote for new feature requests, the is a SQL Server Community Trello board here.

In order to take advantage of this monthly release cadence, the latest and greatest SQL PowerShell module is now called 'SqlServer' whereas the the legacy module, which does *not* have the newest cmdlets released since mid-2016, is 'SQLPS'. SQL PowerShell updates are also shipped with SSMS. This additional unification is really, really handy. SSMS also supports managing Azure components such as Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Data Warehouse, as well as hybrid cloud features such as StretchDB and Backup to URL. And, of course as you'd expect, the newest SSMS release supports various new features in SQL Server 2016 such as Query Statistics, Live Query Plans, Compare Showplan, Security Policies for row-level security, and so on with all the new 2016 goodies we have. There is partial support for managing pre-2008 instances.

If you manage numerous servers on different versions, this unification is fantastic. SSMS is supported for managing SQL Server 2008 through 2016 (except for SSIS instances which sadly still require a version-specific SSMS at the time of this writing). **For this reason, you will want to make sure Visual Studio 2015 is installed first followed by SSMS and SSDT.** This gives it some performance improvements and removes the dependency on installing. SSMS is now based on the Visual Studio 2015 shell.

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