Your choice of language and platforms
Build modern applications using the language of your choice, on-premises and in the cloud, now on Windows, Linux and Docker containers.
Industry-leading performance
Take advantage of breakthrough scalability, performance, and availability for mission-critical, intelligent applications and data warehouses.
Least vulnerable database
Protect data at rest and in motion with the least vulnerable database over the last seven years in the NIST vulnerabilities database.[1]
Real-time intelligence
Gain transformative insights for your business with real-time analytics at up to 1M predictions/second.
Featured SQL Server resources
Azure SQL resource kit
Get the resources and information you need to start your SQL Server migration. Utilize your existing on-premises SQL Server skills and plan your successful deployment to Azure SQL with this resource kit.
SQL Server technical e-books
Get the technical resources, documentation, and code samples you need to support all areas of your data estate—from discovery and research to implementation and maintenance.
Cloud Database Migration Simplified e-book
Help your organization improve cost-efficiency, agility, and scalability by migrating to the cloud. Use this guide to help with planning and implementing your end-to-end database migration strategy, as well as tools to make your migration faster and easier.
Introducing SQL Server 2019
Transform your business with a unified data platform. SQL Server 2019 comes with integrated Spark and Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) for intelligence over all your data.
Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems
Read Gartner’s assessment of the cloud DBMS landscape and learn why Microsoft has been recognized as a leader.
Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Analytics in Azure is up to 14 times faster and costs 94 percent less than other cloud providers. Why go anywhere else?
[1] According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, SQL Server has had the fewest security vulnerabilities over the past seven years when compared with other major database vendors.
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Features |
SQL Server 2017 |
SQL Server 2016 |
SQL Server 2014 |
SQL Server 2012 |
SQL Server 2008 R2 |
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Performance |
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In Memory OLTP |
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In-Memory ColumnStore |
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Real Time Operational Analytics |
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Buffer Pool extension to SSD |
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Adaptive Query Processing [2] |
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Availability |
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Always On [2] |
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Basic Availability Groups |
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Security |
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Transparent data encryption [2] |
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Backup encryption support |
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Encryption at rest and in motion |
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Dynamic Data Masking and Row Level Security |
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Separation of duties |
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Cloud-readiness |
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Backup to Azure |
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Disaster recovery to Microsoft Azure |
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Optimized virtual machine images in Azure gallery |
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Stretch Database |
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Management and programmability |
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Runs on Linux and Docker Containers |
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Temporal tables |
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JSON support |
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Graph data support |
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BI and analytics |
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Integration services managed as a server |
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PolyBase for T-SQL query across Hadoop |
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Tabular BI semantic model [2] |
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Master data services [2] |
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Data quality services [2] |
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In-database advanced analytics |
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End-to-end Mobile BI on any device |
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SQL Server 2017: What’s New in the Database Engine?
SQL Server 2017: Security on Linux
SQL Server 2017: High availability and disaster recovery on Linux
SQL Server 2017: Adaptive Query Processing
SQL Server 2017: BI enhancements
SQL Server 2017: Building applications using graph data
SQL Server 2017: Advanced Analytics with Python
#1 in price and performance—with massive scale
SQL Server consistently leads in the TPC-E OLTP workload, the TPC-H data warehousing workload, and real-world application performance benchmarks. Get record-breaking performance now on Windows and Linux.
Highest performing data warehouses
Get support for small data marts to large enterprise data warehouses while reducing storage needs with enhanced data compression. Scale to petabytes of data for enterprise-grade relational data warehousing—and integrate with non-relational sources like Hadoop.
Security and compliance
Protect data at rest and in motion with a database that has the least vulnerabilities of any major platform for six years running in the NIST vulnerabilities database (National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Vulnerability Database, Jan 17, 2017). Security innovations in SQL Server 2017 help secure data for mission-critical workloads with a layers of protection security approach, adding Always Encrypted technology along with row-level security, dynamic data masking, transparent data encryption (TDE), and robust auditing.
High availability and disaster recovery
Gain mission-critical uptime, fast failover, easy setup, and load balancing of readable secondaries with enhanced Always On in SQL Server 2017—a unified solution for high availability and disaster recovery on Linux and Windows. Plus, put an asynchronous replica in an Azure Virtual Machine for hybrid high availability.
Corporate business intelligence
Scale your business intelligence (BI) models, enrich your data, and ensure quality and accuracy with a complete BI solution. SQL Server Analysis Services help you build comprehensive, enterprise-scale analytic solutions—benefiting from the lightning-fast performance of in-memory built into the tabular model. Reduce time to insights using direct querying against tabular and multidimensional models.
End-to-end mobile BI on any device
Gain insights and transform your business with modern, paginated reports and rich visualizations. Use SQL Server Reporting Services to publish reports to any mobile device—including Windows, Android, and iOS devices—and access reports online or offline.
Simplify data big and small
Combine relational data and big data with PolyBase technology that queries Hadoop using simple T-SQL commands. JSON support lets you parse and store JSON documents and output relational data into JSON files. Now in SQL Server 2017, manage and query graph data inside your relational database.
In-database advanced analytics
Build intelligent applications with SQL Server Machine Learning Services using R and Python. Move beyond reactive and into predictive and prescriptive analytics by performing advanced analytics directly within the database. By using multi-threading and massively parallel processing, you’ll gain insights faster than using open source R and Python alone.
Real-time hybrid transactional/analytical processing
Combine in-memory columnstore and rowstore capabilities in SQL Server 2017 for real-time operational analytics—fast analytical processing right on your transactional data. Open up new scenarios like real-time fraud detection without impacting your transactional performance.
Now on Windows, Linux and Docker
Develop once and deploy anywhere with our consistent experience from on-premises to cloud. Now with support for Windows and Linux as well as Docker containers.
Consistent data platform from on-premises to cloud
Get a consistent experience from on-premises to the cloud—letting you build and deploy hybrid solutions for managing your data investments. Benefit from the flexibility to run SQL Server workloads in Azure Virtual Machines, or use Azure SQL Database to scale and further simplify database management.
Easy-to-use tools and connectors
Use the skills you already have, along with familiar tools like Azure Active Directory and SQL Server Management Studio, to manage your database infrastructure across on-premises SQL Server and Microsoft Azure. Apply industry-standard APIs across various platforms and download updated developer tools from Visual Studio to build next-generation web, enterprise, business intelligence, and mobile applications.
Enterprise
Access mission-critical capabilities to achieve unparalleled scale, security, high availability, and leading performance for your Tier 1 database, business intelligence, and advanced analytics workloads.
Standard
Find rich programming capabilities, security innovations, and fast performance for mid-tier applications and data marts. Easily upgrade to the Enterprise edition without having to change any code.
Express
Build small, data-driven web and mobile applications up to 10 GB in size with this entry-level database. Available for free.
Developer
Build, test, and demonstrate applications in a non-production environment with this full-featured edition of SQL Server 2017.
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Features |
SQL Server 2017 Enterprise |
SQL Server 2017 Standard |
SQL Server 2017 Express |
SQL Server 2017 Developer |
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Scale |
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Maximum number of cores |
Unlimited |
24 cores |
4 cores |
Unlimited |
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Memory: Maximum buffer pool size per instance |
Operating system max |
128 GB |
1410 MB |
Operating system max |
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Memory: Maximum Columnstore segment cache per instance |
Operating system max |
32 GB |
352 MB |
Operating system max |
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Memory: Maximum memory-optimized data per database |
Operating system max |
32 GB |
352 MB |
Operating system max |
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Maximum database size |
524 PB |
524 PB |
10 GB |
524 PB |
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Production use rights |
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Unlimited virtualization, a software assurance benefit |
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Programmability |
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Programmability and developer tools: T-SQL, SQL CLR, Service Broker, JSON, XML, graph data support |
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OLTP performance |
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Advanced OLTP: in-memory OLTP, operational analytics [3] |
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Manageability: Management Studio, policy-based management |
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Basic high availability: two-node single database failover, non-readable secondary |
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Advanced high availability: Always On Availability Groups, multi-database failover, readable secondaries |
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Security |
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Advanced security: Always Encrypted Row-level security, data masking |
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Compliance reporting with SQL Server audit |
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Transparent data encryption |
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Data integration |
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Advanced data integration: fuzzy grouping and look ups |
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Data warehousing |
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Data marts and data warehousing: partitioning, data compression, change data capture, database snapshot |
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In-memory columnstore [3] |
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Adaptive Query Processing [6] |
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PolyBase [4], [5] |
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Enterprise data management: Master Data Services, Data Quality Services [5] |
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Business intelligence |
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Maximum memory utilized per instance of Analysis Services [5] |
Operating system max |
Tabular: 16 GB MOLAP: 64 GB |
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Operating system max |
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Maximum memory utilized per instance of Reporting Services [5] |
Operating system max |
64 GB |
Express with Advanced Services: 4 GB |
Operating system max |
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Basic reporting and analytics [5] |
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Basic data integration: SQL Server Integration Services, built-in connectors |
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Basic corporate business intelligence: basic multi-dimensional models, basic tabular model, in-memory storage mode [5] |
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Mobile reports and KPIs [5] |
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Advanced corporate business intelligence: advanced multi-dimensional models, advanced tabular model, DirectQuery storage mode, advanced data mining [5] |
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Access to Power BI Report Server, a software assurance benefit |
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Advanced analytics |
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Basic Machine Learning integration: connectivity to open source Python and R, limited parallelism [5] |
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Advanced Machine Learning integration: full parallelism of R and Python analytics and the ability to run on GPUs [5] |
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Machine Learning for Hadoop/Spark and Machine Learning for Linux, a software assurance benefit |
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Hybrid cloud |
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Stretch Database [5] |
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[3] In-memory OLTP and in-memory columnstore are limited to the amount of memory specified by edition in the Scale Limits section. Columnstore and Real-time Operational Analytics are also limited to two degrees of parallelism (two cores/query) in SQL Server Standard edition and one degree of parallelism (one core/query) in SQL Server Web and Express editions.
[4] Scaling out queries using PolyBase requires using SQL Server Enterprise edition as a head node.
[5] Certain features including SQL Server Reporting Services, SQL Server Analysis Services, Machine Learning Services, PolyBase, and Stretch Database are not available in SQL Server 2017 on Linux.
[6] Interleaved Execution is available in all editions.
Other SQL Server 2017 editions
SQL Server Web edition
Use a secured, cost-effective, highly scalable data platform for public websites—available to third-party hosting service providers only.
SQL Server Compact edition
Build ASP.NET websites and Windows desktop applications with a free, embedded database app.
Simple pricing metrics
Pay by processing power for mission-critical applications as well as business intelligence. Add self-service BI on a per user basis.
Flexibility and innovation
Cloud-optimized licensing with the ability to license virtual machines, and the flexibility to move from server to server, to hosters, or to the cloud, on the operating system of your choice.
Industry-leading TCO
Get outstanding value at any scale compared to all major vendors. The Enterprise edition offers all product features and capabilities with no costly add-ons required to run your most demanding applications.
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SQL Server 2017 editions |
Ideal for … |
Licensing model |
Channel availability |
Open no level price (US$) |
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Enterprise |
Comprehensive, mission-critical performance for demanding database and business intelligence requirements. Provides the highest service and performance levels for Tier-1 workloads. [7] |
Per core [8] |
Volume licensing, hosting |
$14,256 [9] |
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Standard - per core |
Core data management and business intelligence capabilities for non-critical workloads with minimal IT resources. |
Per core [8] |
Volume licensing, hosting |
$3,717 [9] |
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Standard - server + CAL |
Core data management and business intelligence capabilities for non-critical workloads with minimal IT resources. |
Server + CAL [10] |
Volume licensing, hosting, retail FPP |
$931 [9] |
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Developer |
Full-featured version of SQL Server software that allows developers to cost-effectively build, test, and demonstrate applications based on SQL Server software. |
Per user |
Free |
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Web |
Secure, cost effective and highly scalable data platform for public web sites. Available to third party software service providers only. |
Not applicable |
Hosting only |
See your hosting partner for pricing |
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Express |
Free entry-level database that's ideal for learning, as well as building desktop and small server data-driven applications of up to 10 GB. |
Not applicable |
Free |
[7] Customers who require a massively parallel processing data warehouse now have access to a parallel data warehouse through their Enterprise Edition core licenses with Software Assurance. Parallel data warehouse is part of the Microsoft Analytics Platform System.
[8] Editions sold in the per-core licensing model are sold as 2 core packs.
[9] Pricing represents open no level (NL) estimated retail price. For your specific pricing, contact your Microsoft reseller.
[10] Client access licenses (CALs) are required for every user or device accessing a server in the Server + CAL licensing model. See the product use rights for details.
How to buy SQL Server
Connect with a Microsoft solution provider
Whether you're evaluating business needs or ready to buy, a Microsoft certified solution provider will guide you every step of the way.
Contact your Microsoft account representative
Call your account manager or contact your regional Microsoft office for further details.
Buy online at the Microsoft Store
SQL Server 2017 Standard edition is available to buy online. Easily upgrade to Enterprise edition for comprehensive high-end datacenter capabilities.
Develop using SQL Server Data Tools for Visual Studio
Quickly get started with code samples on GitHub
Connect to SQL Server and SQL Database using Node.js, Java, C#, PHP, Python, and Ruby applications.
