SQL Server Versions - 2012 vs 2014

Question

My team needs to get SQL Server as our backend database. I would like to find out if we should get 2014 or 2012 R2. The rest of the company is probably still SQL Server 2008 R2, Oracle and probably MySQL. I wonder if we get 2014 version which is 2 generations ahead of the 2008 version, would that cause any problem? We will mostly get data from the other databases from other departments of the company.

Another question about version 2012 is that I was told that I should purchase 2014 but download 2012. I would like to find out if the serial number for 2014 can be applied to 2012. I am not sure why I need to purchase 2014 but download 2012 instead.

Please advise! Thank you!

Answer 1

I wonder if we get 2014 version which is 2 generations ahead of the 2008 version, would that cause any problem?

Jumping those two version won't cause any problems.

I would like to find out if the serial number for 2014 can be applied to 2012.

You should check with the MS or your VAR for that sort of licensing question.

I am not sure why I need to purchase 2014 but download 2012 instead.

You don't. My best guess for that advice is to own a license to the latest even if you decide you want to run 2012. Which you don't--2014 is better and stable.

Note: 2016 is in CTP2.

Answer 2

Well, remember that SQL Server 2012 and 2014 has a new license model which is much more expensive.

The basic idea is, do you need the features of SQL 2014 or 2012? 2008 won't be supported for a long time. 2012 would be better as there is still some years of support ahead. Due to the fact that 2012 and 2014 are cost equal, you can go to 2014 which has improvements on the plan generator as 2012 has improvements compared to 2008.

2012 mainly added some nice new functions, improvements on the spatial data functions as well as the column store index. Maybe something you could use. Another point is Always on / Availability Groups. If you need to mirror your databases?

2014 mainly brings some new functions, improvements to the columnstore (it's updateable - yeah!) and in-Memory OLTP functionality. Which could be great on databases with a very heavy throughput.

A migration from 2008 to 2012 or 2014 shouldn't be too hard as there are only a few small possible migration errors in your codebase.

Hopefully this helps you in your decision.

Answer 3

There are a lot of big improvements in both SQL Server 2012 and 2014, the biggest at least to my mind are in-memory OLTP (Hekaton) and columnstore indexes. Both of these can be a huge benefit if you need / can use them in your application. If you are building a data warehouse, then 2014 is definitely the version to choose over 2012 because columnstore indexes can be updated in 2014.

There are also improvements to T-SQL, biggest one to my mind is window functions improvements, which also is a big improvement if you need to implement that kind of logic.

If you decide to use 2012 / 2014, my opinion is that you should definitely go straight to 2014. The changes to the cardinality estimator in 2014 is something that you should be aware of, but it is possible to use the old CE with 2014 too.