In this chapter, we reviewed the SQL Server features for developers that already exist in the previous versions. You can see that this support goes well beyond basic SQL statements, and also beyond pure Transact-SQL.

The features recapitulation in this chapter is also useful as an introduction to new features in SQL Server 2016 and 2017, introduced in the following chapters, especially in Chapter 4, Transact-SQL and Database Engine Enhancement; Chapter 5, JSON Support in SQL Server; Chapter 7, Temporal Tables; and Chapter 13, Supporting R in SQL Server.