Question: I just installed SQL Server 2016 developer version and new samples database WideWorldImports, upon expanding the tables, I noticed a special icon on the System-Versioned table which looks like a watch. What does this special icon which looks like a watch represents in SQL Server Management Studio 2016?
SQL SERVER 2016: Creating Simple Temporal Table
Temporal tables are a new feature that was introduced in SQL Server 2016. A temporal table gives application developers to view the state of data at a point in time. Temporal tables can also be used for logging purposes if required. I wanted to explore how this feature can be used. The documentation has been interesting and I went ahead in trying out how this can be enabled.
One of the most used use case for this feature would be to find the data values in a past date. This can now be easily configured in SQL Server 2016. Let us go ahead and create a database for use and then create a table with the Temporal history database created by default / automatically.