SQL Server 2019 community technology preview 3.0 is now available

We’re excited to announce the monthly release of SQL Server 2019 community technology preview (CTP) 3.0. For customers in the Early Adoption Program, CTP 3.0 is the first release where you’re able to run SQL Server 2019 in production. To apply, please reach out to your assigned Program Manager for more information. Check out the What’s new in SQL Server 2019 preview documentation to learn more.

CTP 3.0 preview brings the following new features and capabilities to SQL Server 2019:

Big data clusters

  • Scale out by supporting deployment configurations with an increased number of SQL Server instances in the compute pool. You can now specify up to 4 instances in the compute pool for optimal performance of your queries against data pool, storage pool, or other external data sources.
  • The mssqlctl utility includes updates to ease the big data cluster management experience with enhancements to the login experience. There is also a new command to list the cluster endpoints.
  • Persistent volumes abstract the details of how the storage is provided and how it’s consumed. In this release, we’re enhancing the supported storage configurations by enabling you to customize storage classes independently for logs and data. With these changes, we also consolidated the storage configurations for big data components, so that the number of persistent volume claims for a big data cluster has been reduced for a default minimum configuration cluster.

Database engine

  • The new Java language software development kit (SDK) for SQL Server to simplify development of Java programs is now open sourced and available on GitHub.
  • Database administrators can register new external language extensions on any OS platform supported by SQL Server. This enables developers to create language extensions for additional languages such as dotnet core, Go, and more.

Master Data Services

  • Master Data Services (MDS) enables you to manage your organization’s reference and master data. You can organize the data into models, create rules for updating the data, and control who updates the data. In CTP 3.0, you can host the MDS database on SQL Azure Managed Instance and can run MDS over SQL Azure-hosted data without having to host another SQL Server for MDS.

Analysis Services

  • Added new query language extensions for the analysis services engine, allowing for better globalization support.

Ready to learn more?

  • If you want to run SQL Server 2019 CTP 3.0 in production with full support from Microsoft support and you’re already enrolled in the Early Adoption Program (EAP), please contact your assigned Program Manager to get set up for production support.
  • To get started with SQL Server 2019 CTP 3.0, you can find the download instructions on the SQL Server 2019 web page or use a SQL Server 2019 CTP virtual machine in Microsoft Azure.
  • Join the SQL Server 2019 Early Adopter Program for access to SQL Server 2019
  • Check out what features were introduced in SQL CTP 2.5
  • Watch the recent webinar on Run SQL Server on Linux and Kubernetes
  • Watch this free on-demand webinar to discover how SQL Server 2019 big data clusters can help you gain business insight