A brief note on version...

With Microsoft's move away from the Service Pack model, SQL Server has seen more frequent updates. This is generally a good thing, but it does pose a problem for those of us who write about it. Information gets out of date. New functionality comes in, old functionality is deprecated, documentation for older versions disappears, and the great cycle of technology continues. Many of us (like me!) write these blogs in our free time, to educate the community and ourselves, and it can be difficult to go back and maintain older posts to ensure they're up-to-date.

I have both Windows and Linux versions of SQL Server (at the time of this writing, my lab VMs are SQL Server 2017 CU14 on Windows 10 and Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS; I have spun up a container or twelve in my time as well, and of course there's Azure SQL Database, and...), and I keep them up-to-date as new cumulative updates are released. I'll do my best to post version information as I write, but I probably won't go back and update old posts unless there's a really big change. Even then, I'll probably write a new post instead.

If you need historical version information, go directly to Microsoft SQL Server Versions List, do not pass GO, do not collect $200. Maybe toss 'em a couple bucks. You can also now find documentation for previous versions of SQL Server on the SQL Server previous versions documentation page.