Data analytics has been the hottest topic in IT for the past few years, with new niches being crowned as the pinnacles of information science almost as fast as technology can progress. However, IT does have a few resolute classics that have stood the test of time and are still in widespread use. SQL (in its many permutations) is a language we are well aware of in the SQL Server world. Another such language is the succinctly titled R. The R language is a data mining, machine learning, and statistical analysis language that has existed since 1993. Many professionals such as data scientists, data analysts, or statisticians have been using the R language and tools that belong in that domain for a similarly long time. Microsoft has identified that although they may want all of the world's data inside SQL Server, this is just not feasible or sensible. External data sources and languages like R exist and they need to be accessible in an integrated manner.

For this to work, Microsoft made the decision to purchase Revolution Analytics (a commercial entity producing the forked Revolution R) in 2015 and was then able to integrate the language and server process into SQL Server 2016. This integration allows a normal T-SQL developer to interact with the extremely powerful R service in a native manner, and allows more advanced data analysis to be performed on their data.