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Feature Spelunking

Aaron Bertrand shows us how to find hidden features in CTPs:

In honesty, I’m just meticulous about installing each new build and immediately digging into the metadata. It would be hard to take a look at sys.all_objects and identify what’s new by sight; even columns like create_date and modify_date are not as accurate as you might expect. (For example, in CTP 3.1, sp_helpindex has a create_date of 2015-11-21 18:03:15.267.)

So instead of relying on photographic memory or hoping that something new will jump out at me while scanning the new catalog, I always install the new CTP side-by-side with the previous CTP (or, in the case of the very first CTP, side-by-side with the previous version). Then I can just perform various types of anti-semi-joins across a linked server to see objects and columns that have been added, removed, or changed.

Very interesting.