While I agree that this all sounds absolutely wonderful, I wonder how much pride there will be when they do an automatic upgrade that has the same effect as 2014 SP1 had on a lot of people or like the "new and improved" cardinality estimator had on our core code. 😉
IIRC, the demise of the DBA has been prognosticated going all the way back to SQL Server 2000 and the Database Tuning Adviser...
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I'm not saying this stuff isn't cool or interesting but I'd be shocked if more that 2% of MS's customer base is using any of it. So, a) why are we being forced to pay for it and b) why are these things taking priority over basic functionality?
To this day, I'm of the opinion that 2012 was the single greatest new release... for no other reason than the expansion of the set windowed functions and the introduction of window frames.
Also, rather than introducing Azure Machine Learning as a new buzz word/feature,why not actually apply machine learning to query tuning and/or plan optimization?
Why are we still, to this day, living with "good enough" execution plans? It seems like, if just a small portion of the efforts being directed into features no one is asking for, were directed into actually improving the core product, everyone would be happier.
Before we let MS off the hook by saying it's impossible to test millions of possible plan combinations quickly, how about we say that we let them have it for ad-hoc queries but demand better for stored procedures?
machine learning is being used for tuning. It's being tuned and worked on in Azure. The goal appears to be to get this on premises, though I have no idea when.
Not to defend MS, but they do introduce features that help us. You mention window functions, what about AGs? Most of what you list are developer features that expand the boundaries of the core engine, and do get more people to use the product. This is a business, and part of the goal is to get more sales. That's part of the deal. Like it or not, small enhancements to something like the query optimizer, don't sell. They don't make a big difference to most people. Heck, most people don't even know what their compilation time is for plans,and they think it's trivial. It can be, but it can also be longer than execution time. There is little benefit to MS to improve some small things that niggle at you or me.
The other thing to keep in mind is that it takes time to use certain features. While I wasn't sure In-Memory OLTP was great, now that it's been around for a few versions, more and more people are using them. I do keep seeing increased adoption, though there are still constraints in those features, so there are limits. Columnstore has been widely adopted.