{"id":7599,"date":"2026-09-29T00:30:04","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T07:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/azure-sql\/?p=7599"},"modified":"2026-09-24T17:02:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T00:02:29","slug":"whats-new-across-microsoft-sql-at-sqlcon-fabcon-europe-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/azure-sql\/whats-new-across-microsoft-sql-at-sqlcon-fabcon-europe-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s new across Microsoft SQL at SQLCon\/FabCon Europe 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Live From Barcelona<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Woo! I\u2019m posting this live from the first ever European SQLCon (joint conference with FabCon EU), and the second ever SQLCon. The energy here is great, as the community comes together in Barcelona and as we prepare to go on the keynote stage and share what\u2019s new! A heartfelt nod to the internal team, our customers, and the community who all contributed to what we are releasing today \u2013 the feedback to build to feedback loop is getting tighter, and each is critical for Microsoft SQL to build a better platform.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">If you&#8217;re here in Barcelona, the full schedule from the Microsoft SQL product team is at <a href=\"https:\/\/aka.ms\/sqlsessions\"><strong>aka.ms\/sqlsessions<\/strong><\/a>. We\u2019d love to chat about your scenarios, so come find us in sessions and at the booth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">And if you\u2019re reading this from home, it\u2019s likely post-keynote, but that doesn\u2019t mean you will miss out on the news! Here&#8217;s what&#8217;s new across Microsoft SQL: SQL Server, Azure SQL, SQL database in Fabric, and the tools you use every day.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Hybrid and migration<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>SQL Server on Azure Local<\/strong> is generally available in both <a href=\"https:\/\/learn.microsoft.com\/azure\/azure-local\/\">connected mode<\/a> and disconnected mode. Disconnected mode matters if you operate in air-gapped, sovereign, or intermittently connected environments and still want the Azure management surface for your SQL estate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server<\/strong> expands to <strong>Germany West Central<\/strong> and <strong>Italy North<\/strong>, continuing the regional buildout so you can keep data residency commitments while running Arc management.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines in Azure Bleu (France Sovereign Cloud)<\/strong> is generally available, bringing the SQL VM experience to France&#8217;s sovereign cloud.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">For VM provisioning specifically, you can now <strong>configure ephemeral storage during provisioning on v6+ VMs<\/strong>. If you&#8217;ve been resizing disks post-deployment to get tempdb where you want it, that step goes away.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">On the Linux side, two things landed, <strong>the <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/learn.microsoft.com\/sql\/linux\/security\/bulk-operations?view=sql-server-ver17\"><strong>bulkadmin<\/strong><\/a><strong> role is now enabled for SQL Server on Linux<\/strong> so bulk inserts work the way they do on Windows, and a <a href=\"https:\/\/aka.ms\/ScriptBasedDeploymentLinuxAzureVM\"><strong>script-based provisioning experience<\/strong> (preview)<\/a> enables flexible and customizable SQL Server deployment experience for Linux Azure VMs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Migration got a real upgrade this cycle:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Skills for SQL migration to Azure<\/strong> (preview) brings assessment, migration, and validation into an agent-driven workflow instead of a checklist you drive by hand.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Migrations to <a href=\"https:\/\/aka.ms\/arc-migration-sqldb-blog\"><strong>Azure SQL Database Hyperscale<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0from the Arc portal (uses Azure Database Migration Service and SHIR) are in preview.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>SSMS target sizing and pricing recommendations<\/strong> are generally available: configuration-based Azure SQL target recommendations with savings options, so the &#8220;what will this cost me&#8221; question gets answered inside the tool doing the assessment.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Expert migration assistance <\/strong>in SSMS connects you to help when the automated path isn&#8217;t enough.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Enterprise-ready SQL estate<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>The <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/aka.ms\/databasehublearndoc\"><strong>Fabric Database Hub estate view<\/strong><\/a> (now in preview) along with Database Agents provide a centralized control plane for monitoring and managing your entire database estate across SQL Server, Azure SQL, PostgreSQL, Azure Cosmos DB, and SQL databases in Fabric. Its unified estate view brings inventory, health, and risk signals together in a severity-prioritized experience, so administrators can quickly see what needs attention instead of managing resources one blade at a time. Findings are organized across Security, Performance, and Optimization, allowing you to move directly from an estate-level summary to the affected resource and issue details.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>The <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/learn.microsoft.com\/azure\/azure-sql\/database\/query-editor?view=azuresql\"><strong>Azure portal SQL query editor is generally available<\/strong><\/a><strong>.<\/strong> Run queries against Azure SQL Database from the portal without a client install, without a jump box, and without leaving the resource you were already looking at. We improved this experience with our learnings from Fabric, and it\u2019s [finally] generally available. In the Azure portal, we also turned <strong>Zone redundancy on by default <\/strong>for Hyperscale, General Purpose, Business Critical, and Premium. Defaults shape outcomes, and we want the resilient choice to be one you get without thinking about it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">Hyperscale keeps expanding with new options for both high-performance and cost-optimized workloads:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>160 and 192 vCore Premium-series service objectives<\/strong> are generally available for the most compute-demanding applications.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Hyperscale serverless auto-pause and auto-resume<\/strong> (preview) helps customers reduce costs for development, test, and other active workloads.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Hyperscale elastic pools expanded capacity<\/strong> (preview) raises the ceiling to 50 databases and 128 TB per pool.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/aka.ms\/sql-aic\"><strong>Automatic index compaction<\/strong><\/a> is generally available. Index bloat gets handled by the platform instead of by a maintenance window and a script. But seriously, some are saying this may be the end of index maintenance, don\u2019t sleep on this one!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>SQL Managed Instance<\/strong> picked up a set of updates that mostly fall under &#8220;the platform does more so you configure less&#8221;: <strong>zone-redundant next-gen General Purpose (GP)<\/strong> and <strong>flexible memory in next-gen GP <\/strong>(preview), <strong>flexible memory for Business Critical<\/strong> (GA), <strong>higher log rate for Business Critical<\/strong> (GA), <strong>support for multiple databases in Always On Availability Groups for MI link<\/strong> (preview), and <strong>SQL performance monitoring<\/strong> (preview).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Local time zone support<\/strong> is in public preview for Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance (Always-Up-To-Date policy). Set the database or session time zone once and stop writing UTC time zone conversion math into every query or expression.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Immutability for point-in-time-restore backups<\/strong> is generally available for Azure SQL Database General Purpose and Business Critical tiers, so your backup chain can meet retention and tamper-resistance requirements directly. You don&#8217;t have to configure it and you don&#8217;t have to pay extra for it, you just get it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>SQL database in Fabric<\/strong> gets <strong>workspace-level Private Link<\/strong> (preview) for network isolation at the workspace boundary, and <strong>SQL Server migration to SQL database in Fabric<\/strong> is generally available. We also shipped several editor improvements that hopefully improve your quality of life (yes, you can finally resize the column widths in the results!). Last month, we also released integrations and support for <a href=\"https:\/\/learn.microsoft.com\/fabric\/database\/sql\/skills\">Skills for Fabric<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/aka.ms\/azuresql-vectorindex-ga\"><strong>Vector indexes are generally available<\/strong><\/a> (Azure SQL DB\/MI, Fabric SQL)<strong>.<\/strong> DiskANN index on vector columns, in the same database as your operational data, with the same security model and the same T-SQL. No separate vector store to provision, secure, and keep in sync.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">AI and developer experiences<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">The tooling story this cycle is about agents doing multi-step work while the deployment discipline underneath gets stronger.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>GitHub Copilot Agent Mode in <\/strong><a href=\"aka.ms\/ssms-september2026\"><strong>SSMS<\/strong><\/a><strong> is generally available.<\/strong> Agent Mode reads context across your database objects, reasons through multi-step problems, and executes workflows: trace a dependency chain, evaluate an execution plan, generate the DDL, show you the diff. It&#8217;s now integrated into Solution Explorer, and you can <strong>export chat<\/strong> so the reasoning behind a change survives past the session.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>SQL Projects in SSMS are generally available<\/strong>, and so is <strong>Schema Compare<\/strong>. Together they close the loop between what an agent generated and what actually ships: compare, diff, generate the migration script, commit it. Your schema belongs in source control, and now the path to get it there is a first-class part of the tool.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>SQL Formatter is generally available in both SSMS and the MSSQL extension for VS Code.<\/strong> Consistent formatting at keystroke speed matters more when a meaningful share of your T-SQL is machine-generated.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Data API builder<\/strong> is adding <strong>vector and JSON data type support<\/strong> across releases 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3, so more of your existing schema maps cleanly to generated REST, GraphQL, and MCP endpoints.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/aka.ms\/microsoftsql-skills\"><strong>Mirosoft SQL Agent skills<\/strong><\/a> are in preview: packaged, reusable skills that give AI agents grounded knowledge of Azure SQL, plus there\u2019s a <a href=\"https:\/\/aka.ms\/azuresql-hub\">new Azure SQL Dev Hub<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">And the <a href=\"aka.ms\/vscode-mssql-september2026\"><strong>MSSQL extension for VS Code<\/strong><\/a> shipped a <strong>new landing page experience<\/strong> (preview), among other updates, so the first five minutes in the extension point you at the thing you actually came to do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">But that\u2019s not all! If you\u2019ve been following our drivers\/SDK releases, you\u2019ve hopefully noticed that we\u2019ve kept up our incredible pace of driver updates. <a href=\"https:\/\/techcommunity.microsoft.com\/blog\/sqlserver\/mssql-django-1-8-0-django-6-1-support-within-48-hours-of-django-6-1-ga\/4545141\">We released a new update to support Django 6.1 within 48 hours of the 6.1 release<\/a>. \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/techcommunity.microsoft.com\/blog\/sqlserver\/mssql-python-1-13-0-arrow-bulk-copy-smarter-tokens-slimmer-wheels\/4544858\">Arrow support in mssql-python now includes bulk copy<\/a>. The big news this week is around connection string simplification, we added connection string keyword aliases to SqlClient, JDBC, ODBC, OLE DB, and go-mssqldb so the same keywords work across all of them. A connection string you write for one driver now works with all of our other drivers with fewer edits. And, perhaps the most anticipated, with the <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.sqlalchemy.org\/en\/21\/\">SQLAlchemy 2.1 release<\/a>, mssyl-python is officially supported!<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">What next<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Catch the sessions.<\/strong> The full SQLCon\/FabCon Europe catalog, including the deep dives on everything above, is at <a href=\"https:\/\/aka.ms\/sqlsessions\">aka.ms\/sqlsessions<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Keep learning.<\/strong> New episodes of Data Exposed and other series land on the <a href=\"https:\/\/aka.ms\/azuresqlyt\">Azure SQL YouTube channel<\/a> every week, and I&#8217;ll be dropping the video-version of this blog next week, if you want more of my personal commentary. Also, the <a href=\"https:\/\/learn.microsoft.com\/credentials\/certifications\/developing-ai-enabled-database-solutions\/\">SQL AI Developer certification<\/a> covers the agentic workflows and modern tooling in this post, if you pass your certification, I want to know on LinkedIn (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/amthomas46\/\">\/amthomas46<\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\"><strong>Tell us what to build next.<\/strong> The roadmap (now hosted at <a href=\"http:\/\/aka.ms\/sqlroadmap\">aka.ms\/sqlroadmap<\/a>) moves when you push on it. Bring your scenarios to the booth this week, or file them through the usual feedback channels.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\">&#8211;Anna<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Live From Barcelona Woo! I\u2019m posting this live from the first ever European SQLCon (joint conference with FabCon EU), and the second ever SQLCon. The energy here is great, as the community comes together in Barcelona and as we prepare to go on the keynote stage and share what\u2019s new! A heartfelt nod to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12403,"featured_media":81,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[601,1,580,690,656,594,668,740,710,720,672,619,743,615,533,625],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","category-azure-sql","category-data-api-builder","category-drivers","category-fabric-sql-database","category-hyperscale","category-sql-database-in-fabric","category-sql-database-projects","category-sql-mcp-server","category-sql-mcp-server-2","category-sql-server-2025","category-t-sql","category-vector-search","category-vectors","category-visual-studio-code","category-vs-code"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Live From Barcelona Woo! I\u2019m posting this live from the first ever European SQLCon (joint conference with FabCon EU), and the second ever SQLCon. The energy here is great, as the community comes together in Barcelona and as we prepare to go on the keynote stage and share what\u2019s new! A heartfelt nod to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/azure-sql\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/azure-sql\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/azure-sql\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/azure-sql\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/azure-sql\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7599"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/azure-sql\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7638,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/azure-sql\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599\/revisions\/7638"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/azure-sql\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/azure-sql\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/azure-sql\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/azure-sql\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}