SQL Server "Denali" contains lot of T-SQL enhancements that developers will come to love. Below is a list of the features:

1. Error Handling - THROW
2. Full Metadata Discovery - EXECUTE WITH RESULT SETS(<>), sys.sp_describe_first_result_set, sys.dm_exec_describe_first_result_set, sys.dm_exec_describe_first_result_set_for_object, sys.sp_describe_undeclared_parameters
3. Sequence Generator - CREATE/ALTER/DROP SEQUENCE, NEXT VALUE FOR, sys.sp_sequence_get_range
4. Query Paging - OFFSET & FETCH clause for ORDER BY clause in SELECT statement
5. Window Functions - ROWS/RANGE framing options, ORDER BY support for windowed aggregates, LAG, LEAD, FIRST_VALUE, LAST_VALUE, CUME_DIST, PERCENT_RANK, PERCENTILE_CONT, PERCENTILE_DISC
6. Date/Time Functions - DATEFROMPARTS, TIMEFROMPARTS, DATETIMEFROMPARTS, DATETIME2FROMPARTS, DATETIMEOFFSETFROMPARTS, SMALLDATETIMEFROMPARTS, EOMONTH
7. Conversion Functions - TRY_CONVERT, PARSE, TRY_PARSE
8. Logical Functions - IIF, CHOOSE
9. String Functions - CONCAT, FORMAT
10. Modified Function - LOG (new optional base parameter)
11. UTF-16 Support - New _SC collations. Functions that deal with data from _SC collations are UTF-16 compatible
12. New Query Optimizer Hints - FORCESCAN, FORCESEEK
13. FileTable - CREATE TABLE AS FILETABLE
14. FullText Search Property List - CREATE / ALTER/ DROP SEARCH PROPERTY LIST
15. Statistical Semantics Search - STATISTICAL_SEMANTICS option in CREATE FULLTEXT, SEMANTICKEYPHRASETABLE, SEMANTICSIMILARITYTABLE, SEMANTICSIMILARITYDETAILSTABLE rowset functions
16. Customizable NEAR search - Proximity search options
17. Circular Arc Segment support in geometry and geography types
18. Partially Contained Database - CREATE DATABASE with CONTAINMENT = PARTIAL
19. Contained Users - CREATE USER WITH PASSWORD in partially contained database
20. Fixed Metadata Collation in Partially Contained Databases - Collation is Latin1_General_100_CI_AS_KS_WS_SC, CATALOG_DEFAULT keyword for referencing metadata collation