The Analytics Platform System (APS), which is a renaming of the Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW), has just released an appliance update (AU3), which is sort of like a service pack, except that it includes many new features.  These appliance updates are made available frequently, about every 3-4 months.  Below is what is new in this release:

TSQL compatibility improvements to reduce migration friction from SQL SMP

• Implements TRY/CATCH block and THROW/RAISERROR/PRINT statements
• Implements error diagnostic intrinsic functions ERROR_NUMBER, ERROR_MESSAGE, ERROR_SEVERITY, ERROR_STATE, and ERROR_PROCEDURE
• Implements global variable @@ERROR
• Implements Transction-state function XACT_STATE
• Implements system message storage sys.messages DMV
• Implements Stored Procedures sp_addmessage, sp_altermessage, and sp_dropmessage
• Implements support for intersect and except queries.

Integrated Azure Data Management Gateway enables Query from Cloud to On Prem through APS

• Enables Azure users to access on-premises data sources via APS by exposing data as secure OData feeds.
• Enables PowerBI (including Power Query, Power Maps and Power Q&A) to use on-prem data from PDW and external Hadoop tables.
• Enables Azure cloud service data mashups to be scaled out via Polybase by querying Hadoop on-premises.
• Creates a scalable, enterprise-class Data Management Gateway that scales out as queries access more on-prem data sources.

Polybase Recursive Directory Traversal and ORCFile support

• Enables users to retrieve the content of all subfolders by pointing one single external table to the parent folder. Removes the burden of creating external tables for each subfolders.
• Enables all Polybase scenarios to run against the file format ORCFiles

Install, Upgrade, and Servicing Improvements

• Improves operational uptime in maintenance windows by improving our Active Directory reliability model.
• Reduces end-to-end install time from 9 hours to less than 8 hours.
• Improves resiliency by reducing issues related to AD VM corruptions, 2-way forest trusts, and CSV/cluster failures.
• Improves upgrade and setup stability and reliability.

Replatformed to Windows Server 2012 R2 as the core OS for all appliances nodes

• Enhances stability with fixes and improvements to core fabric systems such as Active Directory, Hyper-V and Storage Spaces, including:
  • Automatically rebuilding of storage spaces
  • Safer virtualization of Active Directory domain controllers.

Replatformed to SQL Server 2014

• Improves engineering efficiency by moving APS and SQL Server to a common servicing branch, reducing latency in getting bug fixes and support.

More info:

Relational Data Warehouse + Big Data Analytics: Analytics Platform System (APS) Appliance Update 3

Analytics Platform System Appliance Update 3 Documentation and Client Tools