Microsoft's SQL Server is getting an artificial intelligence mind-meld

Microsoft says it's building artificial intelligence capabilities directly into SQL Server 2017, aiming to simplify and speed up machine-learning processes that would normally take place outside the database. The company says the integration will create new deep-learning capabilities inside databases, such as image recognition, text analysis and other AI tasks involving unstructured data. Microsoft describes the integration as a first for relational database management systems. The company is also adding support for the Python programming language into SQL Server, supplementing its existing support for the R programming language that's popular for data science. "SQL Server now is not just a database management system -- I think of it as an intelligence base," said Joseph Sirosh, corporate vice president for Microsoft's Data Group, in a briefing with reporters and analysts.