A lot of small releases were made by Microsoft’s SQL Server team last month. Some of the highlights include Power BI for on-site servers, System Center support for SQL Server 2014, and updated Java/PHP drivers. But first, Microsoft migration tool for DB2 users.

SQL Server Migration Assistant for DB2

Microsoft’s SQL Server Migration Assistant for DB2 recently hit version 6. This tool claims to “automates all aspects of migration including migration assessment analysis, schema and SQL statement conversion and data migration”.

SSMA for DB2 v6.0 is designed to support migration from DB2 on z/OS versions 9.0 and 10.0 and DB2 on Linux/Unix/Windows (LUW) versions 9.8 and 10.1 to SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2014 and Azure SQL DB.

Since DB2 offers features not available in SQL Server, this tool also adds additional functionality to SQL Server to help it emulate DB2. Unfortunately, the specifics of this functionality doesn’t appear to be documented anywhere.

SQL Server Migration Assistant is also available for MySQL, Oracle, Sybase, and Access. You can find more information on migrating from these database engines by reading the SSMA Team Blog.

Power BI

Power BI is ill defined, but in broad terms it is a set of business intelligence tools that are offered through Excel and Office 365. In addition to the normal charts and reports, it includes a natural language query engine designed to allow non-technical users to ask questions about the data.

The newly released Power BI Analysis Services Connector allows you to connect Power BI to an on-site instance of SQL Server Analysis Services. Usage of this connector requires first setting up Active Directory Sync between your Azure and on-site Active Directories.

System Center Operations Manager

Users of System Center Operations Manager can now “discover and monitor” SQL Server 2014 instances using the Management Pack for SQL Server 2014. This management pack is only for SQL Server 2014, a separate pack is necessary for SQL Server 2005 thru 2012.

New features Added Mirroring monitoring scenarios for SQL Server 2014 product

SPN monitor now has ‘search scope’ parameter which allows the end user to choose between LDAP and Global Catalog

Fixed Timeout error in CPU utilization monitoring scenario

Monitoring SQL Server Instances on the same server with their own network interfaces and default port is now available

SQL Server instances with underscores and other allowed special symbols in names can be monitored Improvements Dependency on SQL Server Library management pack has been eliminated.

Support of Localized performance counter for CPU and Logical Disk Metrics.

SQL Server Integration Services monitoring seed discovery.

SQL Server Integration Services moved to separate management pack.

SQL Server non-default port is now supported.

Optimized performance collection replaced with raw performance collection to guarantee accuracy of hourly and daily aggregated data.

PHP Support for SQL Server

Microsoft is now offer three versions of its PHP drivers for SQL Server.

Version 3.1 requires PHP 5.4.32 or PHP 5.5.16+ and SQL Server 2008 or later.

Version 3.0 requires PHP 5.3.0+ (5.3.6+ is recommended).

Version 2.0 requires PHP 5.2.4+ (5.2.13+ is recommended) and SQL Server 2005 or later. This version does not work with PHP 5.4.

Java Support for SQL Server

Like PHP, Microsoft is offering multiple versions of its JDBC drivers for SQL Server.

Version 4.1 supports SQL Server 2008 or later and Java Development Kits 5.0, 6.0, or 7.0.

Version 4.0 supports SQL Server 2005 or later and Java Development Kits 5.0 or 6.0.

Both versions are Type 4 JDBC drivers, which means they are pure Java drivers.