The document discusses new developer features introduced in SQL Server 2012-2016, including SSDT tools, T-SQL improvements like THROW and sequences, in-memory OLTP, common table expressions, and features in SQL Server 2016 such as dynamic data masking, row-level security, always encrypted, temporal tables, and JSON support. SQL Server 2016 also introduced the DROP IF EXISTS statement to drop objects and the ability to insert rows using merge statements with common table expressions.