I'm off on vacation, so I won't be able to respond, but I decided to take a few minutes and look back at 2015 before leaving for the year.

This was a year that seems to have been marked by lots of data loss and breaches. Certainly these were on my mind as I worked on the SQL in the City keynote, but as I've been following Troy Hunt, it seems that every week or two he's uploading more data to HaveIBeenPwned.com. We had some larger ones, with tens or hundreds of millions of account records released. Despite all the press from the Sony hack over a year ago, it seems that few companies have bothered to update their security. In fact, it seems that until they're hacked, no one bothers to fix fundamental security issues in their systems. Perhaps some companies are doing so in the background, and aren't being attacked, but I'm not so sure.

We didn't have any SQL Server releases this year, but we had lots of news, and an unexpected Service Pack. Service Pack 3 for SQL Server 2012 appeared out of the blue for me. I hadn't seen much news on it, and had given up on bothering Microsoft about new SPs for versions. Perhaps they'll continue to build these yearly for supported versions, which is what I hope, but we will see. It does seem that Cumulative Updates have been appearing regularly, with relatively few issues in them, but I'm still wary of using those as the main patching mechanism for critical servers.

We did have a lot of growth in the SQL Server space, with many features being announced and starting to take shape. If you're looking to get up to speed, check out our collection of Learning SQL Server 2016 topics, where we try to keep a growing collection of links to help you learn.  I am excited to see some of the growth of SQL Server to include newer features that people want in their data platform. I'm also glad that things like Stretch Database can be used to help manage the ever growing amount of data we have. Of course, encryption is big on my list, and Always Encrypted is something I am hoping gets lots of adoption.

We've also seen Microsoft really pushing the envelope in terms of data analysis. There is a constant set of articles and blogs written about data scientists, and some of us are moving to learn more about how to better analyze data. Microsoft continues to help, with their forays into Machine Learning, the expansion of the Power set of products (Power BI, Power Query, Power View, Power Pivot, etc.), R language integration, and more. I suspect that more and more of us will get the chance to play with some interesting data analysis tools if we want to. Even if you don't use those to help your business, I have already seen these tools being used to perform index analysis, DBA monitoring, and more. I'd urge you to let your imagination run wild and see what things you might build.

It does also seem that more companies are starting to realize that their data and its integrity and management are important. Data professionals are becoming more valued, but the skills required are growing. There are more and more services and tools to help us manage systems that I do think the simple DBA that administers backups and security is really on the decline. At some point, our employers will demand more.

It's been a good year, and I look forward to 2016. If there are things you want us to help you learn about, leave a comment here, and I'll review them when I get back from vacation. Have a safe, Happy New Year, and I'll see you in 2016.