SQL Server 2016, released on June 1, 2016, marked a significant update for Microsoft's flagship database management system, emphasizing performance, security enhancements, and advanced analytics. This version introduced several key features such as Always Encrypted, a technology designed to protect sensitive data both at rest and in transit by ensuring the SQL Server itself cannot access the encryption keys. Another notable feature is Row-Level Security (RLS), which enables fine-grained control over access to rows in a database table based on the identity or role of the user accessing the data. SQL Server 2016 also brought in JSON support, integrating modern web and mobile applications' data interchange format seamlessly into the relational database environment. Moreover, it enhanced the in-memory OLTP capabilities and introduced PolyBase, a technology for querying distributed datasets stored in Hadoop or Azure Blob Storage using T-SQL. These advancements made SQL Server 2016 a powerful platform for building and deploying critical applications that require high performance, advanced analytics, and robust security.