One of the things I really appreciate Microsoft doing in recent releases of SQL Server is fixing some of the longstanding Connect items. These aren’t necessarily bugs, but design gaps—a good example of this was with SQL Server 2016, where the ability to truncate an individual partition came into effect. Some of these are minor, but have real impact into usability and functionality of the RDBMS.
The feature I am highlighting here is the SELECT INTO syntax for SQL Server. In the past, this syntax could only be used to create the new table in the user’s default filegroup. There were workarounds like changing the default filegroup for the user, but it was an extra step that shouldn’t have been needed. Starting with SQL Server 2017, T-SQL will support the ON syntax in this command:
SELECT * INTO dbo.NewProducts FROM Production.Product ON SecondaryFG
This isn’t huge, but it is a very nice thing that Microsoft has fixed.
