Before you encrypt a database

In order to enable encryption for a database you should set the encryption key.

Here is a database (TestEncrypt with three simple columns) which needs to be encrypted and for which no Encryption key is set.

TestEncryptOptions.png

Change Encryption Enabled from False to True by clicking on the handle.

TestEncryptOptions2.png

Click OK.

You get the following error message:

SQL Server 2016 Public Preview Coming Soon

The first public preview of SQL Server 2016 is imminent. This is deemed to be an historic version with real-time operational analytics; rich data visualization on mobile platforms and advanced analytics already built-in. It also has the latest hybrid cloud scenarios with latest Advanced security technology.

Key features:
Always Encrypted:
Straight from Microsoft Research. Data protection at rest (in Server) and in motion
Encryption key stays with application
Encryption, decryption takes place transparently inside the application
This feature supports the new Stretch Database as well.

Stretch Database:
This technology which is motivated to reduce cost for customers so that they can archive by moving bloated transactional data to Azure and maintain fast performance with hot data. This stretching of transactional data is dynamic and is secure using the latest Always Encrypted feature.



Real-time Operational Analytics and In-Memory OLTP:
Blazing fast transactional performance of real time operational analytics according to Microsoft. 100 times faster queries with in-memory OLTP compared to 30 times presently possible with disk-based system.

Built-in Advanced Analytics, Polybase and Mobile BI
Goes beyond OLTP to data warehousing and Business Intelligence and delivers advanced analytics made possible by Revolution Analytics. It uses R processing with excellent statistics support. Polybase will be integrated with SQL Server to address both relational and unstructured data using SQL Skills. There is a Data Scientist here!!


These are additional capabilities quoted from the blog:

•    Additional security enhancements for Row-level Security and Dynamic Data Masking to round out our security investments with Always Encrypted.
•    Improvements to AlwaysOn for more robust availability and disaster recovery with multiple synchronous replicas and secondary load balancing.
•    Native JSON support to offer better performance and support for your many types of your data.
•    SQL Server Enterprise Information Management (EIM) tools and Analysis Services get an upgrade in performance, usability and scalability.
•    Faster hybrid backups, high availability and disaster recovery scenarios to backup and restore your on-premises databases to Azure and place your SQL Server AlwaysOn secondaries in Azure.

Download a copy of the datasheet here:

You could look up more details here (the pictures are from Microsoft Blog):

Moving from SQL Server 2012 to SQL Server 2014

SQL Server 2014 is still in CTP2 and SQL Server 2012 has been around for some time. You could get a SQL Server 2012 Express free of cost but with limited functionality.

You can download SQL Server 2014 CTP2 here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/evalcenter/dn205290.aspx

While on the above make sure you read all the good things you can do with SQL Server 2014.

You may want to know what you can do with SQL Server 2014 CTP1 that you cannot do with SQL Server 2012 Express. If you are looking at just the tasks that you can accomplish, then compare the two images below (the limited number of tasks is that of SQL Server 2012 Express).

SQL Server 2012 Express

SQL Server 2014 CTP1 (enterprise)

 

Quite a lot of the tasks are new features such as Managing Database Encryption, Deploying to Windows Azure VM, etc.