Developers, database administrators, data professionals, architects and technology decision makers have several opportunities to connect, learn and gain hands-on experience this fall. 2027 Q4 SQL Events Get hands-on with SQL and AI The Friday workshops are led by the SQL product group! They provide a full day of practical learning before the...

Welcome to SQL First, welcome to SQL! You’re going to like this. Upgrading from PostgreSQL is real work, and depending on your old database, this process will vary widely in complexity. I am confident that you’re going to love the mindful and modern features of SQL. Take your time, make the most of the resources built to help you in Microsoft L...

Moving from PostgreSQL to SQL Server? Learn the key differences between timestamp, timestamptz, datetime2, and datetimeoffset, including precision, time zones, offsets, and storage.

Good software design principles apply inside the database too. See how decomposition, encapsulation, statelessness, and clear contracts can make complex T-SQL easier to read, test, reuse, and maintain.

Schema changes are inevitable, but downtime doesn’t have to be. Learn a phased approach to safely evolve a production SQL schema while applications remain online.

Microsoft.Data.SqlClient includes configurable retry logic for SqlConnection and SqlCommand, giving .NET applications built-in resilience for transient SQL Server failures without requiring Polly.

Hybrid search is usually described as combining keyword search with vector search. Microsoft SQL does that, for sure, but we do quite a bit more right out of the box. SQL dynamically evaluates queries and switches between kNN and ANN vector search based on cost and selectivity. These two types of hybrid search, work together, ensuring your semantic...

BlockOnPossibleDataLoss can frustrate developers, but it's one of the most important safeguards in database deployment. Here's how to keep your local development loop fast while protecting the data that matters.

Often in applications, we write database queries. And often, the same query is executed again and again. To make queries against large tables faster, we can add an index. This is a general improvement for anyone accessing the table. However, there is a specially designed index called a covering index that can make queries against large tables parti...

Learn why SET NOCOUNT ON improves stored procedure efficiency, reduces unnecessary messages, and matters to .NET developers.