Arun Sirpal shows off some missing functionality in SQL Server:
Being in the cloud does have many benefits, from lower administration to fast scaling but another “side effect” of operating in Azure SQL Database is the cloud first nature of changes. By this I basically mean new features always get pushed to Azure first before the classic on-premises version so some gems come to light.
Here is one for you. Have you ever wanted MySQL’s functinality to apply LEAST() and GREATEST() argument? Well, you can now, in Azure.
I can’t say that I would use this every day or anything, but I have felt the pain of not having it. There are workarounds, though nothing as convenient as syntax. Hopefully this shows up on-prem in the next version of SQL Server.