Azure SQL Devs’ Corner
Voices from the Azure SQL PM Team, focusing on development and developers
Featured posts
Announcing General Availability of Native Vector Type & Functions in Azure SQL
We are happy to announce that Native vector support in Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance is moving to General Availability this summer. Deploym...
Latest posts
Build a chatbot on your own data in 1 hour with Azure SQL, Langchain and Chainlit
Chatbots are the hot topic lately, and now you can create them easily by downloading solutions like OpenWebUI, connect it to Ollama or any OpenAI compatible API, choose your favorite language model, and then run it. It just takes a few minutes and it's done. But building chatbots is not enough, you most likely want to build a chatbot on your own data. Luckly, the software ecosystem around AI and chatbot is growing every day, and today creating a chatbot that allow your users to chat with data stored in your database is very easy, thanks to libraries like LangChain, ChainLit and, of course, Azure SQL. To get...
EAP for Vector Support Refresh – Introducing Vector type
Latest update - 06 November 2024 Vector Support is now available as Public Preview! Read the announcement here: Public Preview of Native Vector Support in Azure SQL Database! Access to full documentation here: Vector functions. The new data type Not even 6 months ago we started the Early Adopter Preview vector data support in Azure SQL, and we got great feedback and a lot of enthusiasm about the feature. Developers are excited to be able to easily build AI-enabled solution using an enterprise ready, secure, scalable and proven platform like Azure SQL, without the need to move data outside the database for...
Vector Support EAP extended to Azure SQL MI
If you are looking forward to build AI-enabled applications on your own data, you'll be excited to know that the Early Adopter Preview announced for Azure SQL DB on native vector capabilities is now available also for those who have data stored in Azure SQL Managed Instance! Make sure to learn how to store and use vectors functions reading the original post here: Announcing EAP for Vector Support in Azure SQL Database and then fill out the participation form at the end of that post to ask to join the Early Adopter Preview. Azure SQL Managed Instance is designed for customers looking to migrate a large numbe...
Retrieval Augmented Generation with Azure SQL
Retrieval Augmented Generation, or RAG, is one of the hottest topics at the moment as it opens up the possibility of interacting with data using natural language, which is a long-time dream finally coming true. It is very likely that a lot of your data is already stored or will be stored in Azure SQL, so a common request is to have an example on how to apply the RAG pattern to your own data stored an Azure SQL database. This blog post is all about that. Let's start from the basics and make sure the RAG pattern is clearly understood. RAG Pattern 101 To make the explanation easy to understand, even if y...
Simplify development with Dev Container templates for Azure SQL Database
In today's fast-paced software development landscape, having a reliable and efficient local development setup is crucial. Dev Containers provide developers with a seamless way to build and test applications locally before deploying them to the cloud. We are announcing the Public Preview of Dev Container templates for Azure SQL Database. This release provides pre-configured development environments tailored for Azure SQL Database, making it easier for developers to integrate and work with Azure SQL Database in their projects. In this blog post, we'll explore these new development container templates, discuss th...
Similarity Search with FAISS and Azure SQL
In today’s data-driven world, finding similar items within large datasets is a common challenge. Whether it’s recommending products, identifying similar documents, or clustering data points, efficient similarity search is crucial. This blog post will explore how to leverage FAISS (Facebook AI Similarity Search) and Azure SQL to perform similarity searches on Wikipedia movie plots data. The blog will also cover sample code to help you get started. Check out Data exposed video for quick overview and follow along with the code sample. What is Faiss? FAISS (Facebook AI Similarity Search) is a library that allows d...
Building Course Registration Project with Azure SQL Database
This semester long project was completed by Master's students at Cornell University with mentorship from the Azure SQL database product team at Microsoft. Project Mission The purpose of this project is to design a high-fidelity university course registration system utilizing Microsoft Azure cloud services. Our target audience includes universities given that the intended target users are university students. The final result is a full-stack system consisting of the student frontend perspective and the backend Azure SQL database necessary to support this. Project Goals ...
Unleashing the Potential of Generative AI in Azure SQL Database
Generative AI is not just a technological advancement; it's a paradigm shift that is redefining the landscape of customer interaction. Azure SQL Database stands at the forefront of this revolution, offering unparalleled opportunities to harness the power of "your data" in crafting state-of-the-art applications. As we stand at the cusp of an AI renaissance, it's clear that AI-enabled applications are becoming the new norm, from personal devices to the vast expanse of the cloud. Yet, it's not the technology alone that sets you apart—it's how you leverage it with your unique datasets. Your data is the key to deli...
Announcing UNISTR and || operator in Azure SQL Database – preview
We are excited to announce that the UNISTR intrinsic function and ANSI SQL concatenation operator (||) are now available in public preview in Azure SQL Database. The UNISTR function allows you to escape Unicode characters, making it easier to work with international text. The ANSI SQL concatenation operator (||) provides a simple and intuitive way to combine characters or binary strings. These new features will enhance your ability to manipulate and work with text data. What is UNISTR function? The UNISTR function takes a text literal or an expression of characters and Unicode values, that resolves to characte...