SQL Server 2017

Released on October 2, 2017, SQL Server 2017 represented a milestone in Microsoft's database platform evolution, introducing support for running on Linux and Docker containers. This version expanded the accessibility and flexibility of SQL Server, allowing it to be deployed in more environments and integrate more seamlessly with a variety of applications and tools. Among its key features, SQL Server 2017 enhanced the performance and scalability of the database engine, introduced automatic database tuning for optimizing query performance, and incorporated Python support for in-database analytics, alongside the existing R support introduced in the previous version. This inclusion of Python opened up SQL Server to a broader range of data science and machine learning scenarios, enabling complex analytics and predictive models to be run directly against the data within the database. Furthermore, SQL Server 2017 continued to build on the advanced security features, such as Always Encrypted, and introduced new graph database capabilities for modeling many-to-many relationships. These features underscored Microsoft's commitment to offering a versatile, high-performance, and secure database platform suitable for a wide range of applications, from traditional transactional databases to sophisticated analytics solutions.