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Guess the SQL Server 2017 Release Date Contest

By Brent Ozar · February 17, 2017 · 286 comments

They used to release doves, but that’s so John Woo

We’ve been doing this a while now, and time to kick it off again.

  • Leave one – and only one – comment here with your guess of the date. If you leave multiple comments, only the first/earliest one is going to count.
  • “The date” is the date that Microsoft announces as the release date. (Not the date they announce the release date, but the date where the final RTM bits will be downloadable to non-insiders, ordinary folks with MSDN access.)
  • Closest to win, without going over, wins an Everything Bundle.
  • In the event of a tie, the earlier comment wins.
  • Only comments more than 48 hours earlier than Microsoft’s public release announcement will count. If Microsoft makes their announcement, and you run over here trying to leave a fast comment with the release date, not gonna take it.
  • If Microsoft announces two release dates – one for Windows, and one for Linux – then we’ll pick a separate winner for each. (But you only get to leave one date in the comments.)

So what date are you feelin’?

Update 2017/02/23: Helpful reader Brian Boodman wanted to see what dates people were guessing, so he writes:

Quick and dirty C# snippet for “Guess the SQL Server vNext Release Date”. To use, save https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2017/02/guess-sql-server-vnext-release-date-contest/ to c:\tmp\toto\brentdate.html” using Chrome and run the code. The results of this script are intended to be read by a human. http://pastebin.com/nUTTEkqc Modify as needed. Dates earlier than 2017 are very unreliable.

Update 2017/09/25: Looks like the release date will be October 2, 2017! The winner is Martin Surasky, who guessed it first on July 19th. Runners-up are Stephen Holland (who guessed Oct 3 on Feb 17) and Joe Bednarz (who guessed Oct 1 on Feb 17).

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286 comments

  4. Maybe you should post the desired date format – European commenters probably prefer dd/mm while the Americans use mm/dd… might be confusing when looking for the winner 🙂

  21. July 1, 2017

    (By the way they already said it would be mid-year, it was uhhh “slipped” on the PowerBI SSRS blog).

  30. July 20 2017 (I will be hungover from a Metallica concert the night before).

  184. 20170907
    September 7, 2017
    09/07/2017

    Could you provide a more user-friendly overview of dates already mentioned?
    How will you sort it out when evaluating? Could you help us with that, too?
    Please, do add a simple calendar showing which dates are already mentioned and allowing to just pick one and confirm if we really want to bet on that date?