Last week, during Microsoft's annual Ignite shindig, the company unveiled the latest version of their database platform SQL Server. SQL Server 2017 adds a bunch of new features as well as performance and compatibility tweaks so that the Windows and Linux versions are more alike than ever before. And, the new platform is also available on AWS' EC2.

Users of Microsoft Azure now have access to the cloud service's SQL Database Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) feature that can encrypt databases, associated backups and transaction logs at rest in real-time. The aim is to give Azure SQL Database customers peace of mind that their data protection and compliance requirements are being met.

After a preview period, Microsoft has made row-level security (RLS) generally available, providing more control and reducing the risk of errors in a developer's application code. Here's more on how this new feature can benefit you in your app development process.

Microsoft's Analytics Platform System -- a combination of its recently-released SQL Server 2014 platform with Hadoop and Power BI Excel-based tools for drilling into large data sets -- went into general availability today.