Current SQL Server 2019 learning resources

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For those of you who may not be aware, SQL Server 2019 is due soon. In fact, Microsoft announced the community technology preview (CTP) 2.4 last week and they hope to release it later this year.

Last week I presented a SQL Server 2019 session for my employer. In addition, I have been asked a lot of questions about it by various people at a client’s site.

In fact, I suspect I will be asked about it in the future. Because as of the start April I am acting product owner of SQL Server for them. Which is an interesting challenge for me as they have a large estate of SQL Servers.

With that in mind I thought it would be a good idea to share current learning resources. Doing this will help people prepare for when it is officially released.

Now I must stress these are the current resources I recommend and not an exhaustive list of all currently available. I will start with the most popular resource first.

SQL Server documentation

Now SQL Server technical documentation is also referred to as Books Online (aka BOL) by people. However, I have noticed that Microsoft have recently updated it to SQL Server technical documentation.

As you may know, it contains a lot of information about SQL Server. In addition, it contains some useful information about the new features in SQL Server 2019. Which you can read in detail here.

SQL Server workshops

Now this is another resource for SQL Server 2019 which has been provided by Microsoft. It’s originally meant for people who are providing training on certain topics.

Still, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from trying to do these workshops yourself in your own time. It’s available in GitHub for anybody to see and use.

I went through the Big Data clusters one whilst at SQLBits and can vouch for the fact that they are useful.

In addition, Microsoft have one called ‘SQL Server Ground to Cloud’ which links to a wide variety of topics. You can read more about these workshops in detail here.

SQL Server samples

Now here is another GitHub repository that Microsoft provides that has been around for a while. It contains samples of all the older databases such as Northwinds and AdventureWorks.

You can read more about the samples repository in detail here.

However, if you did deeper into the features section you will notice it has a Big Data cluster sample here. I suspect that over time more related content will make its way to this repository, so it is worth keeping an eye on it.

SQLBits videos

Earlier this year the SQLBits conference took place in Manchester in the UK. Something that I discussed in a previous post here.

During that conference various SQL Server 2019 sessions were filmed on the Friday and Saturday of the event. Most of the SQL Server 2019 related sessions were recorded which you can watch for free.

For instance, you can see which SQL Server 2019 related sessions were recorded by clicking on one within the Friday agenda here.

After looking at the Friday sessions you can also navigate to the Saturday sessions to see which ones were recorded.

SQL Server 2019 videos

Recently Microsoft have announced the SQL Server 2019 video series. It looks like Microsoft will be making available a new video each week for a certain amount of time.

I think this is useful for anybody who prefers to learn by watching videos instead of reading. You can read Bob Wards announcement about them in detail here.

Previous posts

You might want to test Linux a bit more because you want to use some of the new features in SQL Server 2019. If you want to find out more about what versions of Linux you can use for testing you can read my previous post here.

Previously I discussed study tips for SQL Server and Azure exams in a post which you can find here. Within this post were links to multiple learning resources which I suspect will be updated to include SQL Server 2019 content.

In addition, if you want to read more about the SQL Server 2019 CTP 2.4 announcement I talked about it in my last post here.

Final word

In case anybody was wondering, I was raised to believe that if you did an April Fools day joke after midday the joke is on you, which is why there is not one in this post.

I hope this post has given you an idea of where to go to find out more about SQL Server 2019.

If you feel strongly that another resource should also be mentioned feel free to comment to help others learn more.