SQL Server 2016 New Features

Query Store

The Query Store feature maintains a history of query execution plans with their performance data. This allows you to quickly identify queries that have become slower recently and use different query plans. 

Polybase

This was introduced into the data warehouse appliance Analytics Platform System in 2015. It is a connector between Hadoop (and Azure Blob Storage) and its data warehouse appliance Analytics Platform System. This functionality is incorporated into the regular on-premises product. 

Stretch Database

The is a hybrid feature to help reduce storage and processing cost and some of your tables will be moved into an Azure SQL Database in the cloud. 

JSON Support

SQL Server 2016 adds support for the lingua franca of Web applications: Java Script Object Notation (JSON).

Row Level Security

This restricts which users can view what data in a table, based on a function which could be useful in multi-tenant environments.

In-Memory Enhancements

This feature will support foreign keys, check and unique constraints and parallelism. Additionally, tables up to 2TB are now supported (up from 256GB).

Alwayson Enhancements

There are some enhancements to Alwayson.