Nadrek (5/16/2016)

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I would count this as a very important release - the In-Memory/Hekaton tables can finally have foreign keys (even if they must reference a primary key), which takes them from party tricks into the realm of the reasonable for databases that enforce data integrity... if you're on Enterprise Edition.

The new COMPRESS and DECOMPRESS functions (GZip) are also tremendously interesting, and moreso in those (rare?) cases where they can be combined with a view and an INSTEAD OF trigger on ancient, awful databases.

Also, for the first time in many years, CREATE CERTIFICATE generates a key that meets both sane minimums and current regulatory guidance (2048 bit certs instead of the pathetic 1024 bit certs we had to work with even on SQL 2014).