Azure SQL Devs’ Corner
Voices from the Azure SQL PM Team, focusing on development and developers
Featured posts
Announcing LangChain integration for your SQL-based AI applications
In today's data-driven world, the ability to seamlessly integrate various technologies is crucial for efficient data management and analysis. We’re excited to a...
Latest posts
What’s a Vector Anyway?
It's a bit of an understatement to say that Artificial Intelligence (AI), and specifically Generative AI, is at the top of every announcement, news feed, article and discussion lately. Not just in technology, but everywhere. There are a lot of things you to learn to understand not just how to use AI, but how it works. One of those things is understanding Vectors. So just what is a vector? In simple terms, a vector is a mathematical object that has a magnitude (length) and a direction. You'll probably remember from math class as an arrow pointing from one point to another on a x, y, and possibly even a z graph ...
Coding at the Speed of Innovation: AI and more with Azure SQL Database
As Build 2024 approaches, the Azure SQL Database team is preparing a great line-up of product announcements. Innovation continues to be a big theme as we prepare to showcase exciting experiences powered by SQL data and generative AI. The ideal starting point for the new generation of AI-ready SQL apps is Azure SQL Database, the fully managed platform-as-a-service (PaaS) database engine that frees developers to focus on innovation. In this post, we recount a few recent announcements plus a free offer and new video resources that can help you get started innovating with AI and Azure SQL Database. Innovate at Hy...
Data API builder becomes Generally Available
Announcing Data API builder General Availability On May 15th, Data API builder becomes Generally Available. Data API builder for Azure SQL Databases – Generally Available It’s been a long road, getting from there to here. Nearly three years ago, Data API builder began as just a dream. How can we reduce the friction for developers wanting to access databases in their client applications? We created Data API builder to solve this, providing secure and feature-rich REST and GraphQL endpoints over databases with zero code. DAB is developer-oriented; it’s open-source and free, even for on-prem databases. ...
Private Preview for External REST Endpoint Invocation with Azure SQL Managed Instance
We have an exciting opportunity for customers and partners to use External REST Endpoint Invocation with Azure SQL Managed Instance in a private preview. What is Azure SQL Managed Instance? Azure SQL Managed Instance is a PaaS service that has near 100% compatibility with the latest Enterprise Edition SQL Server database engine, providing a native virtual network (VNet) implementation that addresses common security concerns, and a business model favorable to existing SQL Server customers. SQL Managed Instance allows existing SQL Server customers to lift and shift their on-premises applications to the cloud with...
Data API builder Version 0.11 Brings In-Memory Caching
Literally, I just said that! I have three daughters, and it's amazing how they ask me the same questions over and over. I don't mind answering them, but I sure wish they would either remember my answer or, at least, write it down. There's a measurable cognitive load with the context switching and staying consistent in my answers. And that's a good—though a little messy—segue into data caching. Data API builder can now relieve your database's burden with the new caching feature available to REST endpoints. Your database is good at joining, filtering, sorting, and projecting data. Two, ten, even a hundred t...
Vector Search Optimization via KMeans, Voronoi Cells and Inverted File Index (aka “Cell-Probing”)
In a previous article I already mentioned how vectors can be easily stored in Azure SQL already and how to calculate dot product and cosine distance using just T-SQL. In this article I will show how to improve the performance in vector search by using a technique that has many name but is really based on something very well know already: KMeans Clustering. As KMeans clustering is a compute intensive operation, this project uses SciKit-Learn library to perform the clustering and then stores the results in a SQL DB table. The results are then used to perform ANN search on the vector column in pure T-SQL. Vector...
Vanna.ai and Azure SQL Database
Vanna.ai and Microsoft SQL Vanna.ai, in partnership with Azure SQL Database Product Management, bring you a collaboration for using Vanna's natural language to SQL (NL2SQL) agent with the Azure SQL Database. How does Vanna.ai work? First, Vanna is an open-source Python RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) framework for SQL generation/natural language to SQL (NL2SQL) and provides a fully hosted platform for application development. Get started for free here. (From the documentation) At its core, Vanna is a Python package that uses retrieval augmentation to help you generate accurate SQL queries for your d...
Introducing Regular Expression (Regex) Support in Azure SQL DB
We are pleased to announce the private preview of regular expressions (regex) support in Azure SQL Database. Regex is a powerful tool that allows you to search, manipulate, and validate text data in flexible ways. With regex support, you can enhance your SQL queries with pattern matching, extraction, replacement, and more. You can also combine them with other SQL functions and operators to create complex expressions and logic. This feature can help you to: The Regex feature in Azure SQL DB follows the POSIX standard and is compatible with the standard regex syntax and supports a variety of...
Empowering the SQLBits website with Azure SQL and Data API Builder
SQLBits is the biggest and most well-known data conference in UK and Europe. With several thousand people attending every year, and with more than 10 years of session recordings, it provides an amazing amount of knowledge to everyone who wants to learn anything around the Microsoft Data Platform. Be it on-premises, or on Azure, or the shiny new Fabric, SQLBits has something for you. In late 2023 the new SQLBits 2024 was unveiled, along with the updated website, during a very funny and engaging live event with the SQLBI folks. If you have missed the event, make sure to watch the recording here: Along with ...