Microsoft Expands AI Portfolio And Announces SQL Server 2022

Microsoft presented over 90 new products and enhancements at the Ignite 2021 customer conference. This includes the AI ​​service “OpenAI,” extensions for “CosmosDB” and “Synapse Analytics,” as well as “Azure SQL Managed Instance.” The Redmond company showed a preview of “SQL Server 2022”.

Microsoft presented over 90 new products and enhancements at the “Ignite 2021” customer conference.

The large, comprehensive AI environment on Azure consists of cognitive services, among other things. “Cognitive Search,” the function for the semantic full-text search, now supports over 50 languages ​​- more are to be added. 

The new Azure OpenAI service gives users access to AI models on par with GPT-3. Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 is an autoregressive language model that uses OpenAI’s deep learning to generate deceptively authentic texts.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella demonstrated how OpenAI could extract critical phrases from various sports reports into a match and combine them into new formulations and program code, matching the videos and photos that are also included. 

The new AI function should obey the principles of “Responsible AI,” such as transparency and explainability. It would help if you had an invitation to try out a new service.

The “Azure Cognitive Service for Language” combines with the new “Language Studio” three previous services: “Text Analytics,” “QNA Maker,” and “Language Understanding.” Combining various language-relevant functions in a single place should better support the developer in his work.

Also Read: The Way To Intelligent Data Management In The Cloud

Azure Data

Developer-friendly features are intended to increase the NoSQL database Azure CosmosDB. The central aspect is cost control through a data throughput limitation, warning message in the “Azure Advisor,” and partial document updates in the Core (SQL) API.

The now generally available “Azure Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra” is intended to support developers and admins in transferring their Cassandra workloads to the cloud. With automatic synchronization, such hybrid workloads can be carried out on-premises and in the cloud simultaneously. In the cloud, they enjoy the benefits of scaling and infrastructure management.

Azure Synapse Analytics

“Azure Synapse Analytics” combines data integration, enterprise data warehouse, and big data analytics. Industry-specific database templates have been added. Customers can now model their data for specific industries and integrate different data sources more efficiently. Customers can try out templates for retail, packaged food, and financial services (banks, fund management, property, and damage insurance).

Real-time analysis functions for telemetry, time series, and log files are also in the beta phase. Customers can query these data sources using the “Azure Synapse Data Explorer” and its query engine, which has been designed for such data types and workloads. This should allow machine and user data to be used for decision-making. This is kind of like Splunk for Azure.

Event Hub Premium

Event Hub, which is one of the first building blocks of Azure, is particularly suitable for IoT analysis in Azure Synapse. Event Hub Premium, now available, allows demanding customers to run streaming workloads with maximum performance and predictability. Data collection, streaming, and analysis take place in real-time. In addition, there is also the creation of corresponding data pipelines to collect and evaluate data. If the customer uses the options for multi-tenant instances with reserved performance, he should achieve maximum results in this PaaS environment.

Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL has fully managed database services. With “Flexible Server,” a deployment option is now available for them that allows maximum control, such as cost control and high availability. This option should still be available in November.

“Azure SQL Managed Instance” is a fully-managed database service that can be used to modernize apps. With the help of the new “Link” function, any SQL server can be connected to offer flexibility with hybrid data and about the mobility of databases.

Disaster recovery and bidirectional data migration between this service and the upcoming SQL Server 2022 are available to users. 

This means that workloads can be set so that read-only scenarios can be realized that support performance and scale.

“Intel Ice Lake” processors are the next generation of hardware that can be used with the current version of Azure SQL Managed Instance. The increase in performance compared to the previous generation should be correspondingly high. More RAM can be allocated per vCore and storage capacity (up to 16 terabytes). With the help of Windows authentication, which is now available in SQL Managed Instance, the customer can switch from app to app in the cloud without logging in again and again.

SQL Server 2022

SQL Server 2022 is also in beta. It is integrated with the Synapse Link mentioned above and with “Azure Purview” to provide customers with deeper insights, help with predictions, and implement governance. Purview manages data in multi-cloud, SaaS solutions, and on-premises, also in Azure, “Microsoft 365,” and the “Power” platform.

This version should be closely linked to the cloud – and this can be seen in the areas of high availability and disaster recovery (HA / DR): For this purpose, data migration should be possible without downtime. ETL connections to cloud analysis tools are no longer necessary. This should allow database admins to manage their data “real estate” with greater flexibility and the least possible disruption for the respective users. The built-in “intelligence” should automatically increase performance and scalability. SQL Server 2022 can be deployed on Linux, Windows, and Kubernetes.