Microsoft SQL Server 2016 CTP 2.2 syncs Master Data Services

Microsoft SQL Server 2016 CTP 2.2 introduces some interesting enhancements to Master Data Services including a plethora of optimizations such as entity attribute custom indexing, enforcing Dynamic Data Compression on IIS and entity level compression. However for me the stand out update is (drumroll):

The Entity Sync Relationship

Versioning of models is a bit tricky for older versions of MDS – if you have a key entity that’s related to a large number of entities this can lead to quite a large model and versioning of any entity would mean versioning of every entity in that model – otherwise you are risking data duplication by re-creating that entity in two separate models. With Entity Sync Relationships you can share entities across models and this is not before it’s time. It’s not quite 100% a direct link between the models – there’s a delay between entity synchronizations of at least an hour, but this makes model versioning a whole lot easier. The current version is SQL 2016 CTP 2.2 and the entity syncing is looking good. As an aside – another smaller but very welcome update in Master Data Services  2016 – you can change the display name for the Code and Name columns.  Again not before it’s time :-)