Meet Bhagdev has a couple MacOS-related announcements for SQL Server. First, the SQL Server team has released command line tools:
We are delighted to share the production-ready release of the SQL Server Command Line Tools (sqlcmd and bcp) on macOS El Capitan and Sierra.
The sqlcmd utility is a command-line tool that lets you submit T-SQL statements or batches to local and remote instances of SQL Server. The utility is extremely useful for repetitive database tasks such as batch processing or unit testing.
The bulk copy program utility (bcp) bulk copies data between an instance of Microsoft SQL Server and a data file in a user-specified format. The bcp utility can be used to import large numbers of new rows into SQL Server tables or to export data out of tables into data files.
Second, there’s a new ODBC driver available:
Azure AD support – You can now use Azure AD authentication (username/password) to centrally manage identities of database users and as an alternative to SQL Server authentication.
Always Encrypted support – You can now use Always Encrypted. Always Encrypted lets you transparently encrypt the data in the application, so that SQL Server will only handle the encrypted data and not plaintext values. Even if the SQL instance or the host machine is compromised, an attacker gets ciphertext of the sensitive data.
Table Valued Parameters (TVP) support – TVP support allows a client application to send parameterized data to the server more efficiently by sending multiple rows to the server with a single call. You can use the ODBC Driver 13.1 to encapsulate rows of data in a client application and send the data to the server in a single parameterized command.
Multi-platform is the catchword of the day. If you’re a MacOS user, this might be a portent of things to come.