Are there any Programmability diffrences between SQL Server 2014 Enterprise vs Standard?

Question

I am trying to find are there any differences between SQL Server 2014 Enterprise and Standard editions in the context of the T-SQL itself. I am aware that there are tools and hardware limitations, for example.

I need to know if there are any T-SQL limitations like:

• query to run faster on Enterprise
• index seek/scan to run faster on Enterprise
• updatable columned stored index to be available for Enterprise only

According this article comparing the Programmability between the editions there is not. Anyway I want to double check it and be sure the performance will be the same (in the context of same hardware) and I will not need to change anything in the T-SQL code.

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Example of such difference is the Direct query of indexed views (using NOEXPAND hint):

In SQL Server Enterprise, the query optimizer automatically considers the indexed view. To use an indexed view in the Standard edition or the Datacenter edition, the NOEXPAND table hint must be used.

Answer 1

A number of features that are categorized under "Data Warehouse" and Scalability and Performance affect Programmability.

This comes into play when a developer modifies their TSQL syntax to take advantage of a particular feature. The syntax will not necessary produce an error, but it may be less efficient. Partitioned tables, indexed views (as you mention), compression, star joins, for example, will all affect the execution plan. The query optimizer is usually smart enough to find the best execution plan for a given edition, however that is not always the case.

It is also likely that, if you're dealing with a large database, that the optimal indexing strategy may differ from Enterprise to Standard, which in turn might effect the query.

To the degree that different editions suggest different TSQL syntax, the Standard Edition syntax is usually the more intuitive. I would also say that in most modern environments you one is much more likely to be affected by the resource limitations than you are by query optimizer differences.