Temporal tables, or system-versioned tables are new to SQL SERVER 2016 and are a way to have access to all of the history of a table. In small databases or for tables where rows are rarely updated this feature is a beautiful thing and will soon find its way into many best practices. To get started, simply right mouse on tables > New > Temporal Table > System-Versioned Table...
When creating a new Temporal Table, you are provided a template to generate the new table. The first section of the given template is for dropping the table if it already exists. Since this is a new table we can skip this part and go to the create table section. *Remember, System versioning must be set to off in order to drop the table.
The second section of the template is for creating the system versioned temporal table. In order for a table to become a system versioned temporal table, we must have a Primary Key and 2 datetime2 colums. The with clause of the create table statement turns system versioning on and defines the history table.
