Azure SQL Devs’ Corner
Voices from the Azure SQL PM Team, focusing on development and developers
Latest posts
Getting started with AI in SQL Server 2025 on Windows
Back in the earlier part of the year (February maybe?), I put this tutorial together for our early adopters in the SQL Server 2025 program. It’s a guide for setting up SQL Server 2025 in a Hyper-V VM (I used Windows Server) with Ollama and ngnix as an https proxy. It's a variation of my workshops for Ignite 2024 and a SQL in Fabric one from February 2025. This tutorial helps you get started using the new AI features of SQL Server 2025 on Windows/Windows Server. Prerequisites Set up your environment The following section guides you through setting up the environment and installing the nec...
New AI Features in SQL Server 2025
We have some great new AI Features in SQL Server 2025. I also figured a video would be better than reading a blog.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDJheVYgeVo but, you can also read all about it here.
MSSQL Extension for VS Code: Introducing Schema Designer (Preview)
Overview Database design can often feel like navigating a maze of tables, relationships, and data types — especially when working directly with T-SQL scripts. But what if you could map out your database, make changes to your tables, and manage complex schemas within a graphical interface? We are excited to announce the Public Preview of Schema Designer in the MSSQL extension for Visual Studio Code! Features The Schema Designer feature offers these features: Open Schema Designer Right-click on the database in the object explorer and select "Design Schema (Preview)" from the menu...
Announcing the General Availability (GA) of JSON data type & JSON aggregates…
We are excited to announce the General Availability (GA) of the native JSON data type and JSON aggregates - JSON_OBJECTAGG & JSON_ARRAYAGG. You can use the JSON data type and JSON aggregates to integrate and work with JSON documents more efficiently in the database. This functionality is available in Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance with the Always-up-to-date update policy. The functionality is also available in SQL Server 2025 preview. Native JSON data type The native JSON data type stores JSON documents in a binary format that the database engine can manage efficiently. The JSON data type is...
Unlocking the Power of Regex in SQL Server
Regular expressions, or regex, are powerful tools for text manipulation and pattern matching. They are incredibly useful in various scenarios, such as data validation, extraction, and transformation. SQL Server 2025 introduces native support for regex functions, making it easier to perform complex text operations directly within SQL queries. This Regex support is available in SQL Server 2025 public preview, Azure SQL Database, SQL DB in Fabric, and Azure SQL Managed Instance. The table-valued functions (TVFs) are currently available on SQL Server 2025 public preview however they will follow on other offerings as ...
MSSQL Extension for VS Code: New UI Goes GA and GitHub Copilot Enters Preview
The SQL development experience is taking a major leap forward with the MSSQL Extension for VS Code. The MSSQL extension is evolving to meet the needs of modern developers, bringing powerful, intelligent, and intuitive capabilities directly into your daily workflow. With this release, we’re announcing the general availability of the enhanced UI and the public preview of GitHub Copilot integration. Together, these updates streamline how developers connect to databases, write queries, and manage schema objects—whether you’re working locally with SQL Server 2025 or in the cloud with Azure SQL or SQL Database in Fabr...
Avoid T-SQL anti-patterns with the free T-SQL analysis tool
T-SQL Analyzer is a free, open-source, cross platform command line tool for identifying, and reporting the presence of anti-patterns and design issues in SQL Server T-SQL scripts. As a database developer, you can catch any potential bad practices and design problems very early in the project process - this ensures a frictionless path to deployment from development and test environments to production. The tool evaluates your scripts with more than 140 rules for design, naming and performance issues. The rules are created by Microsoft and the SQL Server community. If you already maintain your SQL scripts ...
Efficiently and Elegantly Modeling Embeddings in Azure SQL and SQL Server
Storing and querying text embeddings in a database it might seem challenging, but with the right schema design, it's not only possible, it's powerful. Whether you’re building AI-powered search, semantic filtering, or recommendation features, embeddings, and thus vectors, are now a first-class data type. So how do you model them well inside a database like SQL Server and Azure SQL? In this post, I’ll walk you through a practical, scalable strategy to store embeddings effectively—while keeping your schema clean, your queries readable, and your operations efficient. This blog post is part of a series of blogs ...
MSSQL Extension for VS Code: Introducing Schema Compare (Preview)
Overview We are excited to introduce Schema Compare in the MSSQL Extension for VS Code! It can be tedious to manually manage and synchronize different database versions. Enter Schema Compare, the powerful new feature for MSSQL in VS Code that transforms this tedious task into a seamless experience. With intuitive visualization that instantly highlights additions, removals, and modifications between schemas, you gain complete control over which changes to implement. Whether comparing live databases, dacpac files, or SQL projects, Schema Compare empowers you to synchronize database versions with precision and c...