Learn more about FabCon and SQLCon 2026
The excitement surrounding this event reflects the same momentum we’re seeing across our data portfolio. Just two and a half years after Microsoft Fabric reached general availability, it’s already serving more than 31,000 customers and remains the fastest-growing data platform in Microsoft’s history. Fortune 500 companies like The Coca-Cola Company are already using Fabric at scale across their organizations.

Microsoft Fabric is helping us evolve our data foundation into a more unified, AI-ready platform. Combined with Power BI and capabilities like Fabric IQ, it enables the enterprise to turn data into intelligence and act on it faster.

Shekhar Gowda, Vice President of Global Marketing Technologies at The Coca-Cola Company
Our databases are accelerating just as quickly, with SQL Server 2025 growing more than twice as fast as the previous version.

Today, we’re thrilled to share how we are bringing the power of databases and Fabric together to form a truly converged data platform—one that unifies transactional, operational, and analytical data under a single, consistent architecture. I’ll also highlight how we’ve enhanced Fabric to help you transform data into the semantic knowledge AI needs to understand your business, powered by Fabric IQ and Power BI’s industry-leading semantic model technology.

Introducing the Database Hub in Microsoft Fabric
Databases sit at the heart of the enterprise data estate—a system of record powering applications, transactions, and mission‑critical insights. Yet as organizations scale across cloud, on‑premises, and edge environments, database estates have become increasingly fragmented and isolated. As AI places even greater demands on data estates, unifying databases under a single access point and control plane has become essential.

To address this challenge, Fabric is expanding its role as the central access point for enterprise data with the Database Hub in Fabric, now available in early access. Database Hub in Fabric provides a unified database management experience that brings together databases across edge, cloud, and Fabric into a single, coherent view. Teams now have one place to explore, observe, govern, and optimize their entire database estate—including Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, SQL Server (enabled by Azure Arc), Azure Database for MySQL, and Fabric Databases—without changing how each service is deployed.

Built for scale, the Database Hub in Fabric introduces an agent‑assisted, human-in-the loop approach to database management. With built-in observability, delegated governance, and Microsoft Copilot-powered insights, teams can deploy intelligent agents to continuously reason over estate‑wide signals and surface what changed, explain why it matters, and guide teams toward what to do next. The result is a simpler, more confident way to manage databases at scale. Over time, this model enables database estates to become more proactive, resilient, and intelligent, laying the foundation for greater autonomy, while keeping humans firmly in control of goals, boundaries, and trust.

Learn more about Database Hub in Fabric and what’s new across Databases
Bringing databases together under a single management layer is a critical step as you prepare your estates for AI at scale. But it’s not the end of the journey. The challenge shifts from where data lives to how data is understood, connected, and activated across the enterprise.

Getting your data estate ready for AI with Fabric
As organizations move from traditional applications to AI‑powered, multi‑agent systems, the advantage is shifting away from the specific model you deploy. It now lies in the intelligence and context that allow agents to understand how your business is run, the state of your business, and your institutional knowledge to help take meaningful action.

This is the challenge Microsoft IQ is designed to address. Unlike point solutions on the market today, Microsoft IQ provides an intelligence layer that delivers shared, enterprise-grade business context to every agent. That context is built from three complementary sources: productivity signals from Work IQ, institutional knowledge from Foundry IQ, and live business data from Fabric IQ.

However, like the database layer, while the IQ context layer is a critical part of a successful, and healthy AI foundation, it is not the full story. Building a complete AI-ready data foundation requires investing in four core steps:

Unifying your data estate to eliminate silos and reduce architectural complexity.
Processing and harmonizing data so it becomes AI-ready, clean, connected, and structured for both operational and analytical use.
Curating semantic meaning to give agents contextual understanding, enabling them to interpret data the way your teams already do. This is where Microsoft IQ comes into play.
Empowering AI agents to act, applying that context to automate workflows, accelerate decisions, and transform operations end‑to‑end.
Unifying your data estate with Microsoft OneLake
Every AI initiative starts with the same fundamental challenge: understanding where your data lives and how to bring it together. Microsoft OneLake was built to solve that problem by unifying data across clouds, on-premises environments, and third-party platforms into a single logical data lake without unnecessary extracting, transforming, and loading (ETL), fragmentation, or duplicated copies.

Are my agents hunting for data?

Watch the podcast
Connecting to more sources than ever before
Today, we’re expanding Mirroring in Fabric to support even more systems our customers rely on. Mirroring for SharePoint lists and Dremio are now in preview with Azure Monitor coming soon, while mirroring for Oracle and SAP Datasphere are generally available—all of which are available as part of the core mirroring capabilities. We are also introducing extended capabilities in mirroring designed to help you operationalize mirrored sources at scale, including Change Data Feed (CDF) and the ability to create views on top of mirrored data, starting with Snowflake. Extended capabilities for mirroring will be offered as a paid option.

Shortcut transformations are also now generally available, allowing data to be shaped automatically as it connects to or moves within OneLake. You can convert formats such as Excel to Delta tables, now in preview, and apply AI-powered transformations.

Additionally, we are continuing to invest in open interoperability, ensuring OneLake works seamlessly with the platforms organizations already use. We are excited to announce the ability to natively read from OneLake through Azure Databricks Unity Catalog is now in public preview. We also recently announced the general availability of our interoperability with Snowflake.

I’m also excited to share that Auger, a rapidly growing supply chain platform designed to bring intelligence and automation to global operations, has built its platform on Fabric, with all data stored natively in OneLake. This architecture enables Auger customers to seamlessly access their operations data through OneLake shortcuts within their own Fabric environments and use the full power of the platform including Power BI, Fabric data agents, and more. Learn more in my blog, co-authored with Auger Chief Executive Officer Dave Clark.

Protect your data with OneLake security, now generally available
Security and governance remain foundational to OneLake. I’m thrilled to announce OneLake security will be generally available in the coming weeks, enabling data owners to define roles, enforce row- and column-level controls, and manage permissions through a single unified model that follows the data.

To learn more about these announcements, read the OneLake blog and the Fabric Data Factory blog.

Processing and harmonizing data with Fabric analytics
AI agents are only as reliable as the data you feed them. Before data can train or ground an agent, it must be integrated, cleaned, and structured, so the agent operates from consistent, trusted information. With industry-leading engines in Fabric like Spark, T-SQL, KQL, and Analysis Services, we can equip data teams to do exactly that.

Now, we are expanding these capabilities with the introduction of Runtime 2.0 in preview, purpose-built for large-scale data computation. It incorporates Apache Spark 4.x, Delta Lake 4.x, Scala 2.13, and Azure Linux Mariner 3.0 to power advanced enterprise workloads. Materialized lake views are also now generally available, simplifying medallion architecture implementation in Spark SQL and PySpark and enabling always up-to-date pipelines with no manual orchestration. In addition, a new agentic Copilot experience in notebooks delivers deeper context awareness, reasoning over your workspace, and generating code with greater speed and precision.

For real-time scenarios, we’re launching Microsoft Fabric Maps into general availability. Maps add geospatial context to your agents and operations by turning large volumes of location-based data into interactive, real-time visual insights.

For a comprehensive overview of these announcements and much more, read the Fabric Analytics announcement blog and the Fabric Real-Time Intelligence announcement blog.

Creating semantic meaning with Fabric IQ
Preparing raw data for AI is essential. The next step is transforming that data into meaningful, unified business context. That is where Fabric IQ comes in.

Fabric IQ unifies analytical data and operational data, including telemetry, time series, graph, and geospatial data, within a shared semantic framework of business entities, relationships, properties, rules, and actions. Instead of thinking in terms of tables and schemas, your teams and agents can operate on this framework, or ontology, aligned to how the business actually runs.

Fabric IQ ontologies will soon become accessible through an MCP server in preview, enabling agents to discover, understand, and act on this semantic layer. Ontologies can also serve as context sources for maps and soon in operations agents in Fabric, extending shared business context directly into operational decision-making and execution.

We are also excited to announce planning in Fabric IQ, a new enterprise planning capability that enables organizations to create plans, budgets, forecasts, and scenario models directly on top of Fabric’s semantic models. By complementing Fabric IQ’s ontologies with integrated planning, you get a complete, contextual view of your historical, real-time, and forward planning data. This allows users and agents to quickly answer what has happened, what is happening, and what should happen all from a single source. See this in action:

Finally, we recently announced a strategic partnership with NVIDIA to power the next generation of Physical AI by integrating Real-Time Intelligence and Fabric IQ with NVIDIA Omniverse libraries. The combined platform unifies real‑time operational data, business semantics, and physical simulation to enable organizations to optimize their physical operations in scenarios like intelligent digital twins, predictive maintenance, autonomous logistics, and energy optimization.

To learn more about all of our partner announcements, read the Fabric ISV announcement blog and the planning in Fabric IQ blog.

Enhancing the underlying Fabric IQ technology
Powering much of Fabric IQ’s rich experience is a combination of Power BI’s industry-leading, rich semantic model technology and graph in Fabric, our highly scalable graph database. Already delivering insights to more than 35 million active users, semantic models provide the ideal foundation for training agents through Fabric IQ. Now, with the general availability of Direct Lake on OneLake, your tables can be read directly from OneLake with native security enforcement, richer cross-item modeling, and import-class performance without data movement or refresh.

I’m also excited to share that graph in Fabric will be generally available in the coming weeks, enabling teams to visualize and query complex relationships across customers, partners, and supply chains.

To learn more, check out the Fabric IQ announcement blog and the Power BI announcement blog.

Empowering agents to act with Fabric data and operations agents
Frontier organizations are moving beyond general-purpose assistants and instead, adopting multi-agent systems composed of specialized agents. These agents are each grounded on specific data and reusable across different systems, allowing you to deliver more accurate, accelerated, and scalable outcomes.

To support your multi-agent systems, Fabric comes with built-in agent creation capabilities with Fabric data agents and operations agents. I’m excited to share that Fabric data agents are now generally available. Fabric data agents can be thought of as virtual analysts, aligned to specific domain data to support deeper analysis and deliver insights. Operations agents complement them by monitoring real-time data, detecting patterns, and taking proactive action.

Check out a quick demo of operations agents in Fabric:

These agents can be used across Fabric or as foundational knowledge sources in leading AI tools like Microsoft Foundry, Copilot Studio or even Microsoft 365 Copilot. To learn more about our AI announcements, check out the Fabric analytics blog covering data agents and the Fabric IQ blog covering operations agents.

Building mission-critical applications with developer experiences in Fabric
Developers building the next generation of AI applications need a comprehensive, cost-effective data platform that’s already integrated with your existing tools and workflows. Today, we are expanding Fabric’s developer tooling to meet that demand.

First, Fabric Model Context Protocol (MCP) is advancing with two major milestones. Fabric local MCP is now generally available, providing an open-source local server that connects AI coding assistants such as GitHub Copilot directly to Fabric. Alongside this, we’re introducing the public preview of Fabric remote MCP, a secure, cloud‑hosted execution engine that enables AI agents and automation tools to perform authenticated actions in Fabric.

We’re also enhancing our Git integration with selective branching, allowing developers to branch out for a specific feature and pull only the items they need. You also get improved change comparisons to more easily review recent updates, and new folder relationships which show how feature workspaces connect to source workspaces.

We’re also launching two open-source projects to help teams move faster with Fabric: Agent Skills for Fabric and Fabric Jumpstart. Agent Skills for Fabric is an open-source set of purpose-built plugins that let you use natural language in the GitHub Copilot terminal to harness the full power of Microsoft Fabric. Additionally, Fabric Jumpstart is designed to help you get off the ground with detailed guidance, reference architectures, and single‑click deployments for sample datasets, notebooks, pipelines, and reports.

Finally, we are announcing that the Fabric Extensibility Toolkit (FET), an evolution of the Workload Development Kit (WDK), is now generally available. Along with this release, we are enabling support for full CI/CD, variable library, and a new management experience in the Admin portal.

Read the Fabric Platform announcement blog
Migrating your existing Azure service to Fabric
As Fabric continues to grow in functionality, we are also simplifying the migration from other Azure services. In addition to our existing Synapse tooling, we are bringing new migration assistants for Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Azure SQL in public preview.

The new Fabric migration assistant for Azure Data Factory and Synapse Analytics helps move your existing pipelines and artifacts like Spark pools and notebooks into Fabric with minimal disruption. It’s designed to support incremental modernization, allowing teams to evaluate, convert, and optimize pipelines as they transition to Fabric. The migration assistant for SQL databases helps move SQL Server into Fabric by importing schemas through DACPACs, identifying and resolving compatibility issues with AI assistance, and guiding teams through assessment and data copy workflows for a smoother cutover.

See more Fabric innovation
Explore the AI shift with The Shift podcast
In addition to the announcements above, we are also rolling out a broad set of Fabric innovations across the platform. For a deeper look at the updates and what’s new this month, visit the Fabric March 2026 Feature summary blog, the Power BI March 2026 feature summary blog, and the latest posts on the Fabric Updates channel.

Explore additional resources for Microsoft Fabric
Sign up for the Fabric free trial. View the updated Fabric Roadmap. Try the Microsoft Fabric SKU Estimator.
Visit the Fabric website. Join the Fabric community. Read other in-depth, technical blogs on the Microsoft Fabric Updates Blog.
Read additional blogs by industry-leading partners
Sonata Software: Building an AI-ready data platform with data agents, ontology, and governance in Microsoft Fabric
Quadrant Technologies LLC: Real-Time Operational Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric: Deep Dive into RTI Capabilities, Anomaly Detection and Activator Alerting
Inspark: Why switch from Azure Synapse to Microsoft Fabric?
Esri: Unlock the power of location intelligence with ArcGIS for Microsoft Fabric
Dream IT Consulting Services: 8 Real-World Use Cases of Data Agents in Microsoft Fabric
UB Technology Innovations Inc.: From Data Platform to Decision Platform: How Microsoft Fabric and Copilot are Redefining Enterprise Analytics
Simpson Associates: Fabric Data Warehouse: Bringing Structure to Modern Data Strategies
Synapx Ltd.: Migrating Power BI to Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse with Medallion Architecture: A Strategic Imperative for Modern Construction Enterprises
Cloud Services: Real-Time Intelligence in Action: How Microsoft Fabric Helped Delfi Transform Its Newsroom
Cloud Services: Microsoft Fabric Data Agents: A New Reality
iLink Digital: Detect to Act in Seconds: How Real-Time Intelligence Is Rewriting the Rules of Emissions Management
Valorem Reply: How Nonprofits Are Rethinking Data with Microsoft Fabric

The post FabCon and SQLCon 2026: Unifying databases and Fabric on a single data platform appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

This year is especially meaningful, as it marks the return of a Microsoft‑led SQL community event, while also showcasing how SQL continues to evolve as a critical part of Fabric. It is not just about new technology, but about reconnecting with each other and building the future of SQL together.

It’s inspiring to see the Microsoft SQL community continue to grow and engage, with user groups worldwide keeping conversations active across the SQL portfolio and a lot of customers using Microsoft SQL to innovate every day. With a comprehensive portfolio built on strategic common foundations and available across edge, PaaS, and SaaS, Microsoft databases form a unified platform for modern enterprise needs, whether you are migrating and modernizing, building cloud-native AI applications, or unifying your data.

Migrate and modernize with Azure SQL

Many of our customers are not modernizing in one big leap. You are evolving from SQL Server to hybrid and then to cloud services, and you want that journey to feel familiar, predictable, and low risk. That is exactly what Azure SQL is designed to deliver. Built on a consistent Microsoft SQL foundation from on premises to the cloud, Azure SQL brings AI capabilities directly into your database experience, along with enterprise‑grade security, high availability, and the flexibility to scale as your needs grow. Azure SQL is fully SQL compatible, delivers strong performance and low latency, and supports hybrid scenarios through Azure Arc.

AI agents are becoming an important accelerator for database migration and modernization at Microsoft, helping our customers reduce manual effort and move faster with more guided experiences across the journey. The general availability of GitHub Copilot in SSMS 22 is a great example of that investment in action: you can use the same GitHub Copilot experience you already use in Visual Studio and VS Code, now inside SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), with chat and code assistance that helps you write, edit, and refactor T‑SQL more quickly and confidently. Whether you are a developer or database administrator (DBA), new to SQL or highly experienced, GitHub Copilot can support common workflows like improving queries and assisting with troubleshooting and administration tasks right where you work, and we are continuing to expand what it can do.

Today we are announcing savings plan for databases, a flexible, spend-based pricing option that helps you save up to 35%¹ vs. pay-as-you-go prices on a one-year commitment. Savings plan for databases is designed for modern, evolving database environments: Customers commit to a fixed hourly spend for one year and receive lower prices across eligible Azure database services. Savings are automatically applied to the highest-value usage each hour, helping reduce costs while supporting migration, modernization, and architectural change.

Build cloud-native AI apps at scale

Once you move to the cloud, the questions shift. How do you build faster, scale smarter, and unlock more value from your data without re‑architecting everything you have already built? That is where Azure SQL Database Hyperscale comes in.

With Azure SQL Database Hyperscale, customers gain better price-performance, elastic scale and resilience for any workload, without the cost or disruption of rewriting T‑SQL or reworking operational models. Its unique architecture, built on shared storage and multiple replicas, allows you to scale reads independently from writes. With built‑in HTAP isolation, applications can handle massive transactional and analytical workloads without complex redesign. New capabilities now in public preview extend that foundation even further, including the SQL MCP Server for securely connecting SQL data to AI agents and Copilots, as well as larger 160 and 192 vCore options for high‑throughput workloads.

We’re delivering faster, more capable vector indexes to power AI applications. Recent enhancements improve vector search performance and efficiency with no code changes required. With full insert, update, and delete support, vector indexes stay current in real time, enabling dynamic applications. Features like quantization, iterative filtering, and tighter query optimizer integration provide faster, more predictable results, helping teams build responsive AI experiences directly on their SQL data.

Temenos built its next‑generation banking platform, Temenos Core, on Azure using Azure SQL Database Hyperscale to achieve global scale, high availability, and resilient performance. The platform processes billions of transactions daily and more than 17,500 transactions per second at peak. By building on Hyperscale, Temenos reduced onboarding time, accelerated innovation, and shifted banks from worrying about downtime to competing on availability and digital innovation.

Unify your data estate with SQL database in Fabric

We continue to raise the bar on enterprise readiness for SQL database in Fabric by bringing enterprise-grade security and compliance capabilities directly into the platform. Today at SQLCon, we announced the general availability of features including SQL Auditing, Customer‑Managed Keys, and Dynamic Data Masking, and the preview of workspace‑level Private Link. We brought these enhancements to help customers meet strict governance and regulatory requirements without adding operational complexity. The result is confidence that your SQL workloads in Fabric are secure, compliant, and ready for production.

SQL database in Fabric is becoming even more powerful for AI‑driven applications. The same vector indexing enhancements available in Azure SQL Database Hyperscale are now built into SQL database in Fabric as well. Because both are powered by the same Microsoft SQL engine, customers benefit from consistent performance, capabilities, and innovation across the SQL portfolio—making it easier to build intelligent applications wherever their data lives.

Finally, moving to SQL database in Fabric is simpler than ever. The Migration Assistant now supports SQL database in Fabric as a target destination. It provides a Copilot-assisted experience that helps SQL developers assess readiness, migrate schema, identify compatibility issues, and copy data with less manual effort. By preserving familiar SQL skills and workflows, customers can modernize at their own pace while accelerating time to value on Fabric’s unified analytics and AI platform.

There is one more Fabric innovation that matters deeply for how we deliver Microsoft databases as a unified platform. As applications grow more sophisticated, most organizations now rely on a mix of SQL and NoSQL databases across cloud, on‑premises, and edge environments. Provisioning, monitoring, and maintaining health across a growing database fleet often requires multiple tools and portals, making it harder to see what’s happening and manage at scale.

To address this, we are introducing the Database Hub in Microsoft Fabric, now available in early access. The Database Hub provides a unified database management experience that brings together databases across edge, cloud, and Fabric into one coherent view. From a single place, database teams can explore, observe, govern, and optimize their entire estate, including Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc, and Azure Database for MySQL without changing how each service is deployed or operated.

Built for scale, the Database Hub introduces an agent-assisted, human-in-the-loop approach to database management. Intelligent agents continuously reason over estate-wide signals to surface what changed, explain why it matters, and guide teams toward what to do next, while built-in observability, delegated governance, and Copilot-powered insights help teams move from insight to action with greater confidence. With the Database Hub, teams spend less time navigating tools and more time enabling what comes next: unlocking deeper integration across applications, analytics, and AI from a single control plane for the Microsoft databases portfolio.

Database Hub is available today in early access. Sign up today and see how the Database Hub can bring clarity and control to your database estate.

Moving forward with the SQL community

SQLCon is about bringing the SQL community together. It is about rebuilding connections and shared learning. It also reflects our long-term commitment to SQL. With a comprehensive portfolio built on strategic common foundations and available across edge, PaaS, and SaaS, Microsoft databases provide a unified platform for modern enterprise needs, whether you are migrating and modernizing, building cloud-native AI applications, or unifying your data. We are investing in SQL for the future, alongside the community that continues to shape it.

Finally, SQLCon is coming to Europe! Join the global data and SQL community from 28 Sep – 01st October, 2026 in Barcelona, Spain for hands-on learning, expert insights, and real-world stories. Register to be a part of it. I can’t wait to see you there.

Additional SQL resources

• Microsoft Azure Summit: Migrate and Modernize with Agentic AI
• What is new about SQL database in Fabric
• Learn more about savings plan for databases

¹Customers may see savings estimated to be between 0% and 35%. The 35% savings estimate is based on one Azure SQL Database serverless running for 12 months at a pay-as-you-go rate vs. a reduced rate for a 1-year savings plan. Based on Azure pricing as of March 2026. Prices are subject to change. Actual savings may vary based on location, database service, and/or usage. 

The post Advancing agentic AI with Microsoft databases across a unified data estate appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

Enhancing your SQL workflow

From a tooling perspective, we are investing heavily in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and the MSSQL extension for Visual Studio Code. SSMS is where we primarily aim to serve data professionals like you including database administrators, data analysts, database developers, data scientists, and data engineers, and we have been doing so for two decades now. The MSSQL extension for Visual Studio Code is where we primarily aim to serve application developers. Additionally, from a web interface perspective, we are investing in the Microsoft Azure portal and Microsoft Fabric web experiences to support Azure and Fabric cross-functional roles and tasks to be done.

In the past year, we’ve modernized SSMS—now based on the latest release of Visual Studio—and brought in numerous customer requests including dark mode, Arm64 support, Fabric support, GitHub Copilot, and more. We also brought rich, AI-assisted experiences to Visual Studio Code with GitHub Copilot Ask and Agent mode support, in addition to many new and improved capabilities in areas around designing schemas and tables, provisioning and getting connected (including Fabric and local containers), query results, and more. In the web, we launched a unified Azure SQL experience in the Azure portal, and shipped SQL database in Fabric, now generally available.

Building the future of SQL development

In addition to delivering quality releases and consistent functionality across these tools and experiences that enable you to efficiently manage and develop with Microsoft SQL Server, we are aiming higher for the future. Our vision is to equip every database with source control and CI/CD integration, streamline trusted and reliable deployments, provide consistent and tailored Copilot experiences, and deliver modern drivers, SDKs, and CLIs as well as a robust data API and MCP Server. We’re also investing in rich experiences that help developers take full advantage of AI capabilities in the SQL engine, making it easier to build and optimize AI-ready applications.

Delivering on that vision requires focus and critical prioritization, a responsibility that we’re taking with deep consideration and increased transparency to you. Full roadmap details across our tools and experiences can be found at the end of this article. If you were using Azure Data Studio or SDK-style SQL projects in Visual Studio 2022 and are impacted by the retirement of these tools, you can still use the original SQL projects in Visual Studio 2026 so that your established solutions can upgrade to the latest Visual Studio version without compatibility conflicts. SDK-style (Microsoft.Build.Sql) projects are generally available in Visual Studio Code with the SQL Database Projects extension and are directly integrated with SQL database in Fabric source control. In the first half of 2026 SDK-style SQL projects will be added to SQL Server Management Studio, empowering more database professionals with foundational tools for database DevOps.

See what’s next and join the conversation

We know that you will have feedback for us, now and as we go forward, and we want to thank you in advance for that, as it is critical that we understand what you need from your SQL tooling. This benefits you, us, and the entire community.

• SQL Server Management Studio roadmap
• SQL Server Management Studio feedback site
• MSSQL extension for Visual Studio Code roadmap
• MSSQL extension for Visual Studio Code feedback
• SQL projects and DacFx feedback
• Microsoft SQL feedback site
• SQL database in Fabric roadmap
• SQL database in Fabric Ideas site

The post How the Microsoft SQL team is investing in SQL tools and experiences appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

One consistent SQL is a promise of a unified experience that spans edge, cloud, and software as a service (SaaS), empowering developers to create intelligent applications with ease, while enabling data professionals to modernize on their terms. Write once, deploy anywhere because customers run diverse SQL estates, and we meet them wherever they are. Whether you’re running workloads with SQL Server, modernizing in Azure SQL, or activating real-time analytics in Microsoft Fabric, one consistent SQL unifies your data estate, bringing platform consistency, performance at scale, advanced security, and AI-ready tools together in one seamless experience and creates one home for your SQL workloads in the era of AI.

With a consistent platform, optimized performance, and multi-layered security, workloads scale dynamically while staying secure and highly available. And building intelligent, scalable applications is faster than ever with developer-first tools combined with AI capabilities. This is enterprise-grade performance for the era of AI, with one consistent SQL powering innovation across hybrid, multi-cloud, and AI-powered environments, all anchored by a unified data estate.

Delivering a consistent SQL platform across cloud and on-premises

From edge to cloud, one consistent SQL is Microsoft’s commitment to deliver a consistent experience—powering mission-critical workloads, next-generation apps, and data-driven intelligence. It provides unified management across infrastructure, platform, and software services for consistent operations in hybrid scenarios. Developers can use familiar SQL skills and tools to build and manage applications across environments, while sovereign cloud support addresses data residency and compliance requirements for regulated industries.

And now, the centerpiece of this vision takes the stage: SQL Server 2025 is now generally available. Built on SQL Server’s foundation of security, performance, and availability, this release introduces built-in AI capabilities and developer-focused enhancements. These features enable organizations to use existing data to support AI initiatives securely and at scale, all within SQL Server using the T SQL language.

Achieving optimized SQL performance and advanced security

In a world where trust is non-negotiable, organizations expect the same performance, availability, and security standards everywhere in their data lives. They adapt to the demands of your workload without compromise—delivering resilience and speed while keeping data secure and operations steady. These expectations are heightened for mission-critical workloads, where uptime and reliability directly impact return on investment. Businesses need a platform that not only meets these requirements but also evolves to handle growing complexity without adding operational burden.

The next generation of Azure SQL Managed Instance is now generally available to help organizations modernize with improved performance and simplified migration. The release offers expanded storage and database capacity, flexible compute and memory options, and features designed to support diverse workload requirements. These enhancements provide a foundation for scaling applications and managing data securely while maintaining compatibility with existing SQL investments. Customers are already benefiting from Azure SQL Managed Instance. Hexure, a life insurance software company, slashed processing time by 97.2%.

The path to Azure SQL Managed Instance also got easier. SQL Server migration in Azure Arc is now generally available. Copilot-assisted migration streamlines the entire process with real-time replication, confident cutover, and trusted failover—reducing months of work to days and lowering total cost of ownership.

Knowing that we have a reliable and highly secure database platform positions us to think about how we can use AI in ways that will benefit our customers and their customers most. With Azure SQL Managed Instance in place, we’re very well equipped to continue in our role as a leader in insurance tech

—Warren Perlman, CTO, Hexure

Empowering developers with AI-ready SQL tools at scale

One consistent SQL means you can use your existing skills and familiar development tools together with AI-powered capabilities to simplify application creation. As organizations look to integrate generative AI into business processes, complexity and time to value remain major challenges. Analysts predict that most AI applications will be built on existing data platforms—reducing development effort and accelerating delivery. Customers want integration, not disruption, and they expect AI assistance embedded in the tools they already use.

This vision is supported by features that combine intelligence with security. GitHub Copilot integration enables developers to work with AI assistance directly in environments like Visual Studio Code and SQL Server Management Studio 22. Native support for retrieval of augmented generation scenarios includes vector search and semantic indexing within SQL Server and Azure SQL, while secure enclaves and Always Encrypted protect sensitive data during processing. Connections to Azure AI services and governance tools streamline data preparation and compliance, while elastic infrastructure supports training, inference, and deployment at scale. 

Creating a unified data estate for analytics and AI

Microsoft Fabric connects operations, analytics, and governance in one unified experience, unlocking the full potential of SQL data. As organizations prepare for real-time AI applications, the ability to bridge transactional and analytical workloads becomes essential. Analysts describe this capability as “translytical,” a foundation for responsive applications that combine speed with depth. A future-ready data strategy must integrate operational data with analytical insight, and Fabric delivers that integration without adding complexity.aka

Today at Microsoft Ignite 2025, we announced two key advancements: the general availability of Fabric databases and database Mirroring in Fabric. Fabric databases unify operational and analytical data within Fabric, backed by OneLake, the open data foundation for analytics and AI. SQL database in Fabric supports transactional processing, real-time analytics with zero Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL), and AI workloads side-by-side. In addition, database Mirroring enables replication of SQL Server and Azure SQL into Fabric for analytics and AI scenarios without migration or refactoring. Early adopters such as AP Pension have consolidated decades of fragmented data using Mirroring for SQL Server in Fabric and SQL database in Fabric, creating a centralized architecture with automated delivery and strong governance. These capabilities position Fabric as a cornerstone for organizations seeking to modernize data strategies and prepare for AI-powered applications.

Eastman built a new agentic sales copilot app, enabling their sellers to instantly query unified customer data using natural language. By integrating SQL querying with Fabric’s analytics and vector capabilities, the copilot retrieves hyper-precise answers directly from the database.

When it comes to SQL in Fabric, a huge advantage is you have the robustness of SQL Server, but already in the context of Fabric. The fact that it already has so many security features and integrations with the rest of the Fabric platform is a huge advantage.

—Logan Finke, Principal AI Data Architect at Eastman

Innovate with one consistent SQL

One SQL is a promise of consistency, security, and flexibility from edge to cloud, helping you innovate without disruption. Build intelligent apps powered by agentic AI, unlock real-time insights, and meet compliance demands, all with the tools and skills you already trust. Make your legacy databases your launchpad to innovation.

One engine. One experience. One SQL.

Take the next step today

• Learn more about SQL Server 2025 and download now.
• Learn more about next-generation Azure SQL Managed Instance.
• Learn more about SQL database in Fabric and database Mirroring in Fabric.

The post One consistent SQL: The launchpad from legacy to innovation appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

Adoption gains speed 

We’re seeing incredible momentum with SQL Server 2025 since its public preview debut at Microsoft Build. From lighting up community events like SQL Saturdays to being featured at SQLBits 2025 with CTP 2.1, the excitement is electric. SQL Server 2025 isn’t just keeping pace, it’s setting a new standard. Customers are adopting SQL Server 2025 twice as fast as SQL Server 2022 based on downloads of the public preview.

In the early adoption program, participants were asked to rank the SQL Server 2025 features they were most interested in testing. Built-in AI emerged as one of the top priorities, alongside performance and scalability enhancements. In addition, based on feedback from our preview customers, developer-friendly enhancements—especially the introduction of native JSON support—along with powerful T-SQL additions like regular expression support, have also been positively received—streamlining data processing and boosting developer efficiency. Enterprise customers like Entain, Mediterranean Shipping Company, Kramer & Crew, Schultz, and Bühler are already hands-on, exploring how SQL Server 2025 can power their next-gen applications. 

“As one of the largest SQL Server consulting firms in Brazil, we are excited about the AI features in SQL Server 2025, especially the potential for text processing that can benefit companies of all sizes. AI brings new ways to process and extract insights from data and with SQL Server being the core repository for many businesses, native AI features like embeddings, REST API support, and vector indexes are game changers. They eliminate the need for external vector databases, making AI integration more seamless and efficient.”

Rodrigo Ribeiro Gomes, Head of Innovation, Power Tuning

“SQL Server 2025 introduces seamless Azure and Arc integration and features, enhanced JSON and RegEx capabilities, and enhancements to database engine.”  

Shailesh Panday, Deputy Manager, IT, Buhler AG

Explore capabilities with new preview features

SQL Server 2025 introduces a new preview feature option, giving customers the flexibility to balance production stability with early access to innovation. When turned on, it unlocks access to upcoming features still in preview, enabling developers to test and evaluate new capabilities like vector indexing, improved text chunking, and change event streaming without impacting production workloads (a complete list of preview features is here).  

This opt-in model brings the agility of the cloud to on-premises SQL Server, empowering customers to innovate on their terms. Preview features are provided in alignment with Microsoft’s supportability guidelines. They are intended for evaluation and testing purposes only and are not recommended for use in production environments. The database itself in SQL Server 2025 remains as fully supported and is an essential component of the general availability release. Preview features are optional and designed to operate independently in preview mode. Enabling these features does not impact the stability or supportability of your database.  

SQL Server has traditionally used trace flags to enable or disable specific behaviors within the database engine. The new preview feature switch in SQL Server 2025 is fundamentally different from traditional trace flags. While trace flags are primarily used for debugging and diagnostics, often by DBAs or support engineers to control internal engine behavior, the preview feature switch is designed for developers to explore and test new, user-facing capabilities. Trace flags typically operate at the instance level, affecting the entire server, whereas the preview feature switch is a database-scoped configuration, offering more granular control and safer experimentation without impacting other workloads. Learn more about the preview features in the frequently asked questions.

New feature highlights

As SQL Server adoption on Linux continues to grow, we’re excited to introduce preview support for Ubuntu 24.04, one of the most widely used and trusted Linux distributions. This marks a significant step forward in our commitment to cross-platform flexibility and developer choice. By embracing the latest Ubuntu release, SQL Server 2025 ensures developers and IT teams can build and run modern, cloud-connected applications on a familiar and up-to-date Linux environment. 

PolyBase plays a critical role in enabling analytics scenarios by allowing SQL Server to query external data sources like Microsoft Azure Data Lake or Azure Blob Storage using familiar T-SQL. As many of SQL Server’s modern analytics capabilities are deeply integrated with Microsoft Azure services, secure and seamless access to cloud storage is essential. With preview support for Managed Identity authentication to Azure Storage, SQL Server 2025 takes a step forward in simplifying security and access management. This enhancement aligns with SQL Server’s decade-long track record as the most secure database and reinforces our commitment to enterprise-grade security. By eliminating the need for storing secrets or keys, Managed Identity makes it easier and safer for customers to build scalable, cloud-connected analytics solutions using PolyBase. 

Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric is a game-changing capability that unlocks seamless, near real-time analytics on operational data from SQL Server 2025. To help customers manage compute resources efficiently during the mirroring process, SQL Server now supports creating a dedicated Resource Governor (RG) pool. Each phase of mirroring—such as ingestion, transformation, and synchronization—can be assigned to a specific workload group, giving administrators fine-grained control over resource allocation. These workload groups can be placed in the same or different pools depending on capacity planning needs.  

Discover more 

SQL Server 2025

An AI-ready enterprise database with best-in-class security, performance, and availability.

Download RC0 today

• Download release candidate (RC0). 
• Learn more on Microsoft Learn.
• Discover what’s new in SQL Server 2025 in our latest Mechanics video.

The post Accelerating SQL Server 2025 momentum: Announcing the first release candidate appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

“We are allowing the cloud provider to handle hardware resource allocation and maintenance so that our staff focus on program development. This strategy ensures that during system operation we no longer need to worry about hardware failures, power instability or information security issues, greatly improving the system’s operational reliability.”

—Ching-Lung Chang, CIO, Library and Information Services Office at YunTech .

Modernize to Azure, a smooth path, a more powerful destination  

Migrating to a cloud platform is an essential step on the journey to modernization, and there are many choices. What makes SQL Server and Microsoft Azure SQL unique is that it’s built on the same engine, no matter where you deploy, which means you can build on your existing SQL experience while gaining the layered security, intelligent threat detection, and data encryption that Azure provides.  

Modernizing to Microsoft Azure SQL Managed Instance offers cost savings, scalability, security, seamless migration, productivity, and always up-to-date features. Now in preview, Azure SQL Managed Instance next generation general purpose delivers improved performance and scalability, making migration and modernization faster and easier across more customer scenarios.  

Azure is the destination, but we know the journey matters just as much. A new SQL Server migration experience is now under preview in Azure Arc. It is powered by Azure Database Migration Service and offers seamless, end-to-end migration capabilities including continuous migration assessments, simplified provisioning, and real-time database replication, assisted by Copilot in Azure. What once took months can now be accomplished in just days, with confidence, continuity, and control.

In-place upgrade to SQL Server 2025  

Another way to stay protected is to upgrade your SQL Server to  SQL Server 2025. Built on SQL Server’s legacy of best-in-class security, performance and availability, SQL Server 2025 empowers you to develop modern AI applications using your data. It provides built-in, extensible AI capabilities, enhanced developer productivity, and seamless integration with Azure and Fabric, all within SQL Server engine using the familiar T-SQL language. 

The upgrade experience has been streamlined. With the retirement of Azure Data Studio and Data Migration Assistant, migration capabilities are now integrated directly into SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). This eliminates the need for separate tools, reducing complexity and effort. In SSMS 21, a new migration extension allows DBAs and partners to assess and upgrade SQL Server instances from older to newer versions, all within the same management environment. 

Stay protected on-premises or in multi-cloud environments with Azure Arc  

Extended Security Updates for SQL Server 2016 offers an enhanced cloud experience through Azure Arc. With this customer-centric approach, security updates will be natively available in the Azure portal through Azure Arc. Enabling your SQL Server with Azure Arc also unlocks Azure benefits and flexible subscription billing for SQL Server 2016 workloads on-premises or across multi-cloud environments.  

If you enable Extended Security Updates subscription in your production environment through Azure Arc, you have access to SQL Server Extended Security Updates subscription in the non-production environment for free, through SQL Server Developer edition or an Azure Dev/Test subscription.  

We encourage all our customers running SQL Server 2016 to start planning for the end of support. We have migration resources, best practices, and more, as well as a rich ecosystem of partners ready to help. To get started, please visit the following pages to learn more: 

• Why migrate Windows Server and SQL Server to Azure: ROI, innovation, and free offers.
• Get the full return on investment (ROI) and total cost ownership (TCO) reports from IDC: The Business Value of Microsoft Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance Workload and The Business Value of Microsoft Azure for SQL Server and Windows Server Workloads.
• Onboard your SQL Server to Azure Arc.

Frequently asked questions 

What does end of support mean? 

Microsoft Lifecycle Policy offers 10 years of support (five years for mainstream support and five years for extended support) for business and developer products (such as SQL Server and Windows Server). After the end of the extended support period, there are no patches or security updates, which might cause security and compliance issues, and expose your applications and business to serious security risks. 

What do Extended Security Updates include? 

Extended Security Updates include provision of security updates and bulletins rated critical by the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), for a maximum of three years after the end of extended support.  

Extended Security Updates are distributed if and when available. Extended Security Updates don’t include technical support. Customers must purchase a paid support plan (Pay Per Incident, Unified, and Premier Support for Partners) to leverage technical support. Extended Security Updates don’t include new features, functional improvements, nor customer-requested fixes. However, Microsoft might include non-security fixes as deemed necessary. 

Why do Extended Security Updates only offer “critical” updates? 

For end of support events in the past, SQL Server provided only critical security updates, which meets the compliance criteria of our enterprise customers. SQL Server doesn’t ship a general monthly security update.

The post Protect and modernize SQL Server 2016 workloads with Microsoft  appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

A thriving community at the heart of SQL Server 2025

As we look back at the creation of SQL Server 2025, we want to extend our deepest gratitude to the community leaders, MVPs, partners, and Microsoft engineers who have shared their insights, expertise, and enthusiasm about this exciting release. Their passion for SQL Server and commitment to knowledge-sharing continue to inspire us.

In the resources below we showcase the expertise of our community as well as Microsoft, with blogs and videos that will help you make the most of everything SQL Server 2025 has to offer. These resources dive into key innovations that set SQL Server 2025 apart, including best-in-class security, built-in AI, developer enhancements, and Fabric mirroring.

Insights from Microsoft engineering, MVPs, and partners

SQL Server 2025 overview

We’ll get started with resources that provide an overview of key SQL Server innovations and then dive into each of the core pillars of best-in-class performance and security, AI-built in, made for developer, and cloud agility through Azure.

• At Microsoft Build, Microsoft’s Bob Ward and Muazma Zahid covered everything database developers need to know in their session SQL Server 2025: The Database Developer Reimagined, and Raj Pochiraju launched his deep dive blog into all things SQL Server 2025.
• Bob Ward was interviewed by theCube at Dell Technologies World, where he and Rob Sonders from Dell discussed how data fuels AI and the key AI features in SQL Server 2025.
• Joey D’Antoni from Redmond Magazine interviewed Shireesh Thota and shared his thoughts on the most exciting features in Microsoft Build: SQL Server 2025 Is (Almost) Here and Why Microsoft Is Still Betting Big on SQL Server in a Cloud-First World, both on Redmondmag.com.
• Microsoft’s Anna Hoffman and Bob Ward have launched a new series on Data Exposed that will cover all the highlights.
• Looking for a quick overview? The Microsoft Mechanics video, What’s New in SQL Server 2025 breaks it all down in just 15 minutes.

Best-in-class security and performance

SQL Server remains as the most secure database in the last decade, with best-in-class performance and availability. This latest release harnesses the latest innovation from Microsoft Entra and brings over 50 enhancements to the database engine.

• Explore how to save time and reduce risk with Microsoft SQL Engineering PM Dimitri Furman’s blog on tempdb space resource governance.
• Dimitri also shared how SQL Server 2025 has optimized Halloween protection by redesigning the way the database engine solves the Halloween problem and improves query performance.
• HPE spotlighted SQL Server 2025 in a recent blog, underscoring its exceptional performance and availability—further validating the platform’s enterprise-grade capabilities.
• Learn how to streamline T-SQL Snapshot backups using T-SQL REST API and  Pure Storage in the blog by MVP and partner, Anthony Nocentino: Streamlining T-SQL Snapshot Backups.

“SQL Server 2025 is an important release, delivering significant improvements in performance, reliability, security, and the developer experience for our trading platform.”

—Ola Hallengren, Chief Data Platforms Engineer at Saxo Bank and a Data Platform MVP

AI built-in   

Learn how to accelerate AI apps closer to your own data using extensible tools with built-in vector capabilities.

• Dive into the SQL Server 2025 AI enhancements in Microsoft’s Davide Mauri’s blog on SQL Server 2025 AI Capabilities.
• For those who are in a hurry, check out this great SQL in 5: New AI features in SQL Server 2025 from Brian Spendolini, Microsoft SQL Engineering PM.
• Dhananjay Mahajan, Microsoft SQL Engineering PM, hosted a webinar with Pure Storage to help you get ready for SQL Server 2025: Accelerating AI, Performance, and Resilience—From Query to Infrastructure.
• Follow MVPs Anthony Nocentino and Ben Weissman in their video series “Anthony and Ben talk about SQL Server 2025”, starting with Vector Search and Ollama.
• Get started with vectors with MVP, Deb Melkin’s Getting Started with Vector Searches in SQL Server 2025.

“We are excited about the AI features in SQL Server 2025, especially the potential for text processing that can benefit companies of all sizes. AI brings new ways to process and extract insights from data, and with SQL Server being the core repository for many businesses, native AI features like embeddings, REST API support, and vector indexes are game changers.”

—Rodrigo Ribeiro Gomes, Head of Innovation, Power Tuning

Made for developers

SQL Server 2025 is the most significant release for SQL developers in the last decade. With features including native JSON support, built-in REST APIs and RegEx enablement, change event streaming plus a new Standard Developer edition and new SSMS release, SQL Server 2025 helps streamline application development and greatly reduce code complexity.

• SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 21 is now generally available. Read about the new SSMS release in the Microsoft Community Hub.
• Copilot is available in SSMS, learn how Copilot in SSMS preview can help make you more efficient – answering your questions and helping you write, edit, and fix T-SQL.
• JSON Enhancements are covered by MVP Daniel Hutmacher who shares hands-on insights in JSON indexes in SQL Server: First impressions, while Microsoft SQL Engineering PM Umachandar Jayachandran explores JSON data types and aggregates in his blog.
• SQL Server 2025 introduces native support for regex functions, making it easier to perform complex text operations directly within SQL queries. Read Microsoft SQL Engineering PM Abhiman Tiwari’s blog to Unlock the Power of Regex in SQL Server.

“Our initial tests have shown great results with fuzzy string matching and regex, significantly reducing the need for external coding to clean data. This improvement in development time and data quality stability is a huge benefit for our end-users. Additionally, we are exploring vector indexes, which have the potential to be a game-changer for our data management.”

—Paw Jershauge, Senior DBA and SQL Specialist, Orifarm Group A/S

Cloud agility through Azure

Powered by Azure, SQL Server 2025 enables real-time analytics with Fabric database mirroring and brings seamless cloud agility to any environment through Azure Arc.

• Explore how Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric enables you to drive enhanced analytics and insights for your on-premise data in Microsoft SQL Engineering PM Ajay Jagannathan’s blog on Mirroring in SQL Server.
• And for our Spanish speakers, Javier Villegas, Microsoft MVP, has created a wealth of in-depth content including his video on Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric – SQL Server.

“Change Event Streaming and Fabric Mirroring for SQL Server 2025 help MSC to build the bridge to bring our operational data into Microsoft Fabric.”

—Javier Villegas, IT Director—DBA and BI Services, MSC Technology (North America)

Keep learning about SQL Server 2025

• Bookmark the SQL Server 2025 Learn page.
• Follow the SQL Server 2025 Blogging Series.
• Get SQL Server 2025 and start using it today.

SQL Server 2025

An AI-ready enterprise database with best-in-class security, performance and availability.

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The post From code to community: The collective effort behind SQL Server 2025 appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

SQL Server 2025, now in public preview, empowers customers to develop modern AI applications securely using their data, complete with best-in-class security, performance, and availability. It provides built-in, extensible AI capabilities, enhanced developer productivity, and seamless integration with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Fabric—all within the SQL Server engine using familiar T-SQL language. 

Your data, any model, anywhere 

One of the most exciting new capabilities of SQL Server 2025 is the integration of AI directly into the database engine, enabling more intelligent search. With built-in vector search capabilities, you can perform semantic searches over your own data to find matches based on similarity, alongside full text search and filtering you are already using in SQL Server. This built-in capability opens up a host of exciting new use cases such as discovering deeper connections within large datasets, providing a natural conversational experience across various enterprise systems.  

SQL Server 2025 introduces enhanced model management by building model definitions directly into T-SQL, enabling seamless integration with popular AI services such as Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI Service, OpenAI, Ollama, and others. Models are all accessed through REST APIs allowing you to deploy any model securely isolated from the SQL Server engine, anywhere from ground to cloud. As developers test embedding models to find the best fit for their use cases, whether running open-source models on laptops or hosting purpose-trained models, SQL Server 2025 makes it convenient to switch models without needing to change the code. 

This release also provides other essential building blocks for AI development and operational retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) patterns powered by AI agents. It includes vector embedding generation and text chunking built into T-SQL, using Disk Approximate Nearest Neighbor (DiskANN) as a vector index for faster, resource-efficient, and accurate results. Additionally, SQL Server 2025 offers seamless integration with popular AI frameworks like LangChain, Semantic Kernel, and Entity Framework Core. 

“With the new semantic search and RAG capabilities in SQL Server 2025, we can empower existing GenAI solutions with data embeddings to create next-generation, more intelligent AI applications. By connecting systems, we deliver a seamless, natural conversational experience across enterprise environments.”

—Markus Angenendt, Data Platform Infrastructure Lead, Kramer & Crew  

Microsoft’s most significant release for SQL developers in the last decade 

We understand that developers need the right tools and interfaces for modern, data-intensive applications. SQL Server 2025 delivers a rich set of feature enhancements that significantly streamline development process, reduce code complexity, and improve developer productivity. Along with built-in AI capabilities, this release makes SQL Server 2025 the most significant release for SQL developers since the introduction of SQL Server 2016 a decade ago.  

Enhancing data enrichment is our first area of focus in this release. SQL Server 2025 offers native JSON support, empowering developers to process JSON documents natively. Combined with REST APIs and Regular Expressions (RegEx) enablement, developers can now enrich, validate, and manipulate their datasets with external data sources. This allows for building more dynamic, enterprise-grade applications with richer functionality and enhanced performance. 

Empowering developers to build real-time, event-driven applications with SQL Server is another scenario that this release unlocks. Change Event Streaming allows users to consume transaction log changes as events directly from SQL Server to Microsoft Azure Event Hubs. This provides a new method to mitigate some of the issues developers have seen with the Input/Output (I/O) overhead of Change Data Capture (CDC). It also opens new possibilities such as developing real-time, event-driven applications powered by AI agents. 

There’s also excitement on the language and tooling front. We’re thrilled to announce the preview of our new open-source Python driver for SQL Server.¹ Built from the ground up, this driver offers Python developers a robust, efficient, and fully open-source solution for connecting to SQL Server, as simple as pip install. In addition, we are bringing AI-powered assistance directly into your workflow with the integration of MSSQL Extension for Visual Studio Code with GitHub Copilot, now in preview. With GitHub Copilot aware of your SQL Server database connection, developers can generate SQL and object-relational mapping (ORM) migrations, explore schemas, optimize queries with intelligent suggestions, and streamline database interactions—all within in Visual Studio Code.  

“I am genuinely enthusiastic about the AI advancements in SQL Server 2025. These features, along with the enhancements in RegEx and JSON data support, promise to make AI functionalities accessible to a broader range of software applications, and significantly enhance our database operations.” 

—Jacob Saugmann, SQL Specialist, J.H. Schultz Information A/S

Best-in-class security, performance, and availability 

This release builds on SQL Server’s history as an industry leader in database security, performance, and availability. For our enterprise customers, security is non-negotiable. SQL Server remains as the most secure database in the last decade.² SQL Server 2025 continues the product’s legacy of top-notch security by incorporating modern identity and encryption practices. Support for Microsoft Entra managed identities improves credential management and reduces potential vulnerabilities.³

We’re bringing Optimized Locking to SQL Server, to reduce lock memory consumption and minimize blocking for concurrent transactions through Transaction ID (TID) Locking and Lock After Qualification (LAQ). This capability enables customers to increase uptime and enhance concurrency and scale for SQL Server applications. 

SQL Server 2025 has over 50 enhancements made to the database engine including key improvements for HADR all based on customer feedback. This new release will bring enhancements to performance for applications with no code changes required through Intelligent Query Processing (IQP) and columnstore improvements, enhancements for query processing, and enabling Query Store for readable secondaries.  

“Security Cache Improvement proved invaluable for high-demand environments like ours, reducing disruption when applying permissions on servers with 20,000–25,000 active connections. This enhancement ensures minimal performance impact, streamlining security management. The ordered non-clustered Columnstore index significantly improved query performance by over 63%, optimizing workloads reliant on analytical processing.”

—Madhab Paudel, Database Engineer, Entain

Cloud agility through Azure 

To build scalable analytics, data needs to be extracted, transformed, normalized, and made available in a central place. SQL Server 2025 will support database mirroring in Fabric, giving you near real-time analytics using a zero extract, transform, and load (ETL) experience and allowing you to offload your analytical workloads to Fabric.³  

Azure is a critical component of SQL Server. With Azure Arc, SQL Server 2025 will continue to offer cloud capabilities to enable customers to better manage, secure and govern your SQL estate at scale across on-premises and cloud. 

“Fabric mirroring for SQL Server 2025 helps MSC to build the bridge to bring our operational data into Microsoft Fabric.”

—Javier Villegas, IT Director of DBA and BI Services, Mediterranean Shipping Company

Get started with SQL Server 2025 today

With every AI-powered query for hybrid search, every millisecond saved in query execution, every change event streamed in real time, SQL Server 2025 is a critical building block for modern data-intensive applications in this AI era. Ready to try it out? Learn more about SQL Server 2025.

SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 21, now generally available, is based on Visual Studio 2022 and includes 64-bit support. This modernized version is available from the Visual Studio Installer, offers automatic updates, and introduces Git integration, query editor enhancements, and a new connection experience.

Microsoft Copilot in SSMS, now in preview, is available as an optional workload when installing SSMS 21, and assists customers in writing, editing, and fixing T-SQL queries using natural language. Leveraging database context, it also helps with database administration, maintenance, configuration and more.³

Explore solutions and capabilities

• Learn more from our Microsoft Build 2025 session: SQL Server 2025: The Database Developer Reimagined.
• Deep-dive blog on Tech Community.
• Explore solutions from Microsoft SQL Server.
• MSSQL Extension for Visual Studio Code with GitHub Copilot.
• Learn What’s new in SQL Server 2025.
• Follow the SQL Server 2025 Blogging Series to stay up to date.

SQL Server 2025

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¹ Public preview of Python driver is June 1, 2025. The alpha version is available on GitHub today. 

² According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology Comprehensive Vulnerability Database, as of December 2024.

³ Although SQL Server 2025 in public preview is free to try, using some features such as Microsoft Entra, Fabric and Copilot in SQL Server Management Studio 21 could incur costs based on usage. Try Azure for free and explore Fabric trial capacity.

The post Announcing SQL Server 2025 (preview): The AI-ready enterprise database from ground to cloud appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

Mirroring provides a modern way of accessing and ingesting data continuously and seamlessly from any database or data warehouse into OneLake in Microsoft Fabric. This is all in near real-time thus giving users immediate access to changes in the source!

Today we are thrilled to announce that Mirroring for SQL Server in Fabric for all in-market versions of SQL Server from SQL Server 2016 to SQL Server 2022 is in preview.

Additionally, with the preview announcement of SQL Server 2025, we are also excited to announce the preview of Mirroring for SQL Server 2025 in Fabric.

Let’s take a look at the capabilities for each of these previews.

Mirroring in Fabric from any of your SQL Server sources ensures that your source transactional SQL Server database is always up to date and available in the Fabric OneLake, providing a solid foundation for reporting, advanced analytics, AI, and data science. There is no complex setup or ETL for Mirroring. You setup the mirror from Fabric Portal by providing the SQL Server and database connection details, provide selections on what needs mirrored into Fabric, either all data or user selected eligible mirrored tables. And, just like that mirroring is ready to go. Mirroring SQL Server database creates an initial snapshot in Fabric OneLake after which data is kept in sync in near-real time with every transaction when a new table is created/dropped, or data gets updated.

Mirroring for SQL Server (2016-2022) in Microsoft Fabric

Mirroring for SQL Server to Fabric from these SQL Server versions relies on the Change Data Capture (CDC) technology available in SQL Server. CDC captures an initial snapshot of all the tables selected for mirroring and there after replicate the changes. Additionally, on-premises data gateway (OPDG) is required to be installed in your SQL Server environment. The mirroring services connects to OPDG to read the initial snapshot as well as the changes and pulls the data into OneLake and converts into an analytics-ready format in Fabric.

For detailed steps (including pre-requisites) to configure, and monitor mirroring from SQL Server to Fabric, refer to the Mirrored SQL Server documentation.

SQL Server 2022 mirroring setup and replication in action:

Mirroring for SQL Server 2025 in Fabric

While the main functionality and experience stays the same as above, mirroring from SQL Server 2025 uses change feed instead of Change Data Capture. This is the same technology used in mirroring for Azure SQL in Fabric. In this version, SQL Server keeps track and replicates the initial snapshot and changes to the landing zone in OneLake which is then converted to an analytics-ready format by the mirroring engine in Fabric. On-premises data gateway is primarily used as a control plane to connect and authenticate your on-premises environment to Fabric. Arc Agent is required for outbound authentication from SQL Server to Fabric.

SQL Server 2025 mirroring setup and replication in action:

For detailed steps (including pre-requisites) to configure, monitor and troubleshooting mirroring from SQL Server 2025 data to Fabric, refer to the Mirrored SQL Server documentation.

The table below summarizes the differences between various SQL sources when mirroring to Fabric.

From here on, the mirrored data in the delta format is ready for immediate consumption across all Fabric experiences and features like Power BI with new Direct Lake mode, Data Warehouse, Data Engineering, Lakehouse, KQL Database, Notebooks and copilots work instantly.

Resources:

What’s new with Mirroring at Microsoft Build 2025 – Mirroring in Fabric – What’s new

Try out Mirroring in Fabric, sign up for a free trial and get started.

Download the SQL Server 2025 preview.

The post Mirroring for SQL Server in Microsoft Fabric (Preview) appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

The Microsoft Connector for Oracle enables data export from and import into Oracle databases within an SSIS package. This feature, available in Enterprise editions of SQL Server 2019 and 2022, will remain functional for the lifecycle of the SQL Server product. However, support for this feature will officially end on July 4, 2025. With the deprecation, future product releases will provide no further bug fixes. Additionally, it will not be supported from SQL Server 2025 and onwards.

Today, customers are leveraging the Microsoft Connector for Oracle in a variety of scenarios, including integrating Oracle data with other sources and supporting ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes to gain valuable insights. We recommend that customers use the SSIS ADO.NET Source and ADO.NET Destination components as the primary alternative solution to the Microsoft Connector for Oracle.

These SSIS ADO.NET components offer similar ETL capabilities for connecting Oracle databases with a .NET provider, specifically the OracleClient Data Provider, to connect, transfer, and transform your data efficiently. For further detailed instructions, please refer to the step-by-step guide.

If you need any assistance, please contact Microsoft Support.

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Exploring best-in-class connectivity to Oracle with Microsoft Fabric 

The announcement of the deprecation of the SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) Microsoft Connector for Oracle also presents an opportunity to explore new solutions for modern data integration with Oracle.

Microsoft Fabric is an end-to-end analytics and data platform designed for enterprises that require a unified solution. It encompasses data movement, processing, ingestion, transformation, real-time event routing, and report building. It offers a comprehensive suite of services including Data Engineering, Data Factory, Data Science, Real-Time Analytics, Data Warehouse, and Databases. 

Data Factory in Microsoft Fabric offers a modern data integration experience with Oracle databases, allowing reading from Oracle databases on-premises or behind a virtual network, and writing to any data destination.

Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric allows users to enjoy a highly integrated, end-to-end, and easy-to-use product that is designed to simplify your analytics needs. You can continuously replicate your existing data estate directly into Fabric’s OneLake, which can be used for all your analytical needs. This feature allows businesses to continuously integrate their existing data estate without complex ETL. 

Let’s explore the details of each of the approaches below. 

Oracle connectivity with Data Factory

Data Factory in Microsoft Fabric provides a modern data integration experience to ingest, prepare, and transform data from a rich set of data sources. It incorporates the simplicity of Power Query, and you can use more than 200 native connectors to connect to data sources on-premises and in the cloud.

One of the powerful features of Data Factory is its ability to configure and manage Oracle database connections in a copy activity. This functionality allows organizations to seamlessly integrate their Oracle databases into their data pipelines, ensuring efficient data movement and transformation. Configure Oracle database in a copy activity provides comprehensive instructions on how to perform this configuration. 

You can leverage the on-premises data gateway to securely connect to your on-premises Oracle database. This gateway acts as a bridge, enabling seamless data movement between on-premises data sources and cloud services. For detailed instructions, please refer to move data from Oracle to Fabric Lakehouse via pipeline and on-premises data gateway.

Replicating Oracle data into Fabric’s OneLake with Mirroring 

Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric offers a modern approach to seamlessly accessing and ingesting data from any database or data warehouse into OneLake in Microsoft Fabric. This feature allows businesses to continuously integrate their existing data estate without complex ETL processes. 

Open Mirroring in Fabric is extensible, customizable, and built on the open Delta Lake table format. It enables applications and data ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) to write change data directly into a mirrored database in Fabric using public APIs (Application Programming Interface). Once the data lands in OneLake, Open Mirroring handles complex data changes, ensuring all mirrored data remains continuously up-to-date and ready for analysis. 

We are thrilled to see Oracle Golden Gate streamline the delivery of mirroring solutions in Microsoft Fabric by integrating their data solution into Open Mirroring. As a key partner in our Open Mirroring ecosystem, Oracle Golden Gate offers a powerful and seamless approach to data replication, enabling continuous and efficient integration of data into Microsoft Fabric’s OneLake. This partnership highlights our commitment to providing modern, extensible solutions that simplify data integration and drive value for our customers. 

Simplifying Oracle to SQL Server Migration: Leveraging Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA)

Additionally, if you are looking to migrate Oracle Database to SQL Server, Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) is a tool designed to automate database migration. SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for Oracle is a comprehensive environment that helps you quickly migrate Oracle databases to SQL Server, Azure SQL Database. The Oracle to SQL Server migration guide provides detailed instructions on how to migrate your Oracle database to SQL Server using SSMA for Oracle. This comprehensive guide ensures a smooth transition, minimizing disruptions and maximizing efficiency.

Looking forward

The deprecation of the SSIS Microsoft Connector for Oracle offers an opportunity to explore and implement more advanced and robust data integration solutions. By considering the ADO.NET components, Microsoft Fabric, or Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant for Oracle, organizations can ensure continued efficiency and reliability in their data integration processes. Each of these alternatives brings unique benefits, allowing businesses to choose the one that best aligns with their operational requirements and strategic goals. 

As the landscape of data integration evolves, staying informed about the latest tools and technologies will be crucial for maintaining a competitive edge and achieving seamless data connectivity. By proactively addressing the deprecation and selecting the appropriate alternative, organizations can continue to leverage their data assets effectively and drive business success. 

Resources 

Learn more about Data Factory in Microsoft Fabric and Oracle to SQL Server migration

• Load data from or into Oracle database—SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) | Microsoft Learn 

• What is Microsoft Fabric—Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn

• Data Factory in Microsoft Fabric documentation—Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn 

• Configure Oracle database in a copy activity—Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn 

• Move data from Oracle to Fabric Lakehouse via pipeline and on-premises data gateway—Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn 

• Mirroring—Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn

• Introducing Open Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Fabric Blog | Microsoft Fabric 

• Open Mirroring (Preview) Partner Ecosystem—Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn

• Oracle to SQL Server: Migration guide—SQL Server | Microsoft Learn

• Migrating Oracle Databases to SQL Server (OracleToSQL)—SQL Server | Microsoft Learn

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