Across the announcements we shared in Barcelona, SQL continues to build on the foundation enterprises have trusted for decades. This gives organizations more control where their workloads run, more room for applications to grow, and more intelligent tools for operating databases in the agentic era.

Running data and AI on infrastructure you control

For organizations across Europe, digital sovereignty has become a priority. They need greater control over where data resides without putting modern app development, performance, or AI beyond reach.

This is a reality that Microsoft SQL has been preparing for decades, steadily strengthening security, resilience, and performance across its ecosystem. Capabilities such as Transparent Data Encryption, released in 2008, Always Encrypted in 2016, and Ledger in 2022 have continued to strengthen the security and control organizations need for sovereign environments.

Building on this history, we’re now announcing general availability of SQL Server on Azure Local for both connected and disconnected operations.

This release brings the Azure control plane and management to customer-controlled environments, providing a consistent SQL and Azure experience for workloads that need to remain close to their applications, users, or physical operations. This includes:

• Connected deployments: Organizations can use Azure-based management while keeping workloads and data local.
• Azure Local Disconnected Operations (ALDO): Organizations get a local control plane for their private sovereign environments, supporting operations where cloud connectivity is unavailable or restricted.

For organizations that want to leverage AI in these environments, Foundry Local on Azure Local, now in preview, enables teams to build AI experiences close to their data. Applications, databases, and AI models can remain within the customer-controlled environment, so sovereignty requirements don’t put AI innovation out of reach.

For deployment options, licensing, and local AI capabilities, learn more about SQL Server on Azure Local.

Giving applications room to grow with Azure SQL Database Hyperscale

As applications mature, their demands rarely stay predictable. Workloads grow, usage patterns change, and the database needs to constantly adapt without forcing teams to rethink the application architecture around it.

Azure SQL Database Hyperscale is designed to provide flexibility while delivering the performance applications need. Azure SQL Database Hyperscale is SQL Server rearchitected for cloud scale. By decoupling compute and storage, Hyperscale gives applications room to evolve and the scale to meet more demanding workloads.

Now, we’re extending that flexibility and performance even further:

• More compute: 160 and 192 vCore Premium-series service objectives are now generally available.
• More scale and better cost efficiency: Hyperscale serverless auto-pause scales to zero and instantly resumes. Along with higher-density elastic pools, both these features are now in preview, providing cost efficiency to customers.
• Vector search: DiskANN vector indexes are now generally available, bringing high-performance vector search to operational data. SQL’s vector index now has full DML support, allowing you to modify data in vector-indexed tables while the index automatically stays updated in real-time.
• A simpler path to Hyperscale: A new Azure Arc migration experience is in preview, bringing assessment, provisioning, migration, validation, and cutover into a centralized workflow.

The scale figures become more meaningful when they represent businesses preparing for the moments when demand is highest and the tolerance for disruption is lowest. SAP Commerce Cloud offers a compelling example.

SAP and Microsoft developed a plan to migrate over 6,000 production databases to Azure SQL Database Hyperscale while prioritizing a seamless transition for customers. Hyperscale removed earlier storage and compute ceilings, giving SAP access to as many as 192 vCores and 128 TB of storage for individual databases, alongside zone redundancy supporting a 99.995 percent service-level agreement.

The result: SAP Commerce Cloud processed $17.8 billion in merchandise with 100 percent uptime during Black Friday and handled nearly 11,000 orders per minute at peak. That is the kind of growth a database platform must be ready to support.

Our goal is to give customers the ability to choose a strong foundation early and keep building on it. Hyperscale combines the familiar SQL platform with an architecture that accommodates changing application needs, including new AI experiences operating directly on business data.

Turning database signals into guided action

As applications and database estates grow, signals become scattered across engines and environments, making issues harder to spot and resolve.

Database Hub in Microsoft Fabric, now in public preview, brings inventory, health, performance, security, risk, and optimization signals into a centralized view of your database estate. Administrators and developers can quickly see where attention is needed, explore aggregated or per-resource trends and opportunities through consolidated charts and dashboards, and act from within the hub using database agents.

Database agents for SQL and PostgreSQL on Azure help turn these signals into guided action. The agents reason over database signals, continuously helping administrators understand performance bottlenecks, identify optimization opportunities, recommend actions, and, within appropriate guardrails, help carry those actions forward. SQL Database Agent combines SQL’s native intelligence that includes IQP (Intelligent Query Processing), which is based on decades of domain-specific development and workload telemetry. Intelligent Query Processing, along with AI for reasoning, makes it the industry’s best DB agent.

The preview experience begins with database agents for SQL in Database Hub and for PostgreSQL in Visual Studio Code, with these capabilities coming to both surfaces over time. Our vision is a consistent, extensible agent experience that works cohesively across the tools and environments developers and database professionals use, rather than intelligence tied to a single interface.

Across these agentic operations, human judgment remains central. The aim is to shorten the distance between a signal and a well-informed action while respecting existing permissions, operational guardrails, and developer control.

Bringing AI assistance into familiar developer workflows

As AI continues to become a bigger part of database development, our goal is to make it useful in the tools and workflows developers and DBAs already rely on.

Agent Mode for GitHub Copilot in SQL Server Management Studio is now generally available, helping developers reason across database objects and complete multistep tasks from a single goal or prompt. It can investigate dependencies, analyze execution plans, generate and evaluate DDL, review proposed changes, and iteratively gather context to help users move complex database work forward. SQL Projects and Schema Compare are also generally available in SSMS, alongside SQL Formatter in SSMS and Visual Studio Code, making it easier to bring database changes into source control and maintain consistent T-SQL.

We are also extending these capabilities beyond the development environment. Data API builder adds vector and JSON support to help connect SQL data with modern applications and agents through REST, GraphQL, and MCP endpoints.

Together, these announcements help teams bring AI into database development while keeping familiar tools and engineering practices at the center.

What we build next

Thank you for being part of this community. The announcements we have made at SQLCon Barcelona are a milestone, but the work that matters most is what you carry home and create with it. Whether that means revisiting your applications’ digital sovereignty needs, giving them room to grow, or finding a better way to understand and manage your data estate, we want our investment in SQL to help turn that momentum into something valuable for our users and customers. Here’s where you can start:

• Deploy SQL Server on Azure Local
• Deploy SQL Server on Azure Local Disconnected Operations
• Move your database to Azure SQL Database Hyperscale
• Try Database Hub in public preview

You can learn in greater detail about all the announcements at aka.ms/sqlconnews. Thank you for your continued trust and we cannot wait to see what you build with SQL. Until then, adios!

The post SQLCon Barcelona 2026: Advancing SQL with greater control, scale, and intelligence 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.

During recent years, Azure has undergone significant evolution, marked by groundbreaking innovations like Microsoft Fabric and Azure Data Lake Storage. As we continue this journey, it remains imperative to keep evolving our approach on hybrid data storage, ensuring optimal empowerment for our SQL Server customers in leveraging the best from Azure.

Retirement of SQL Server Stretch Database 

On November 16, 2022, the SQL Server Stretch Database feature was deprecated from SQL Server 2022. For in-market versions of SQL Server 2019 and 2017, we had added an improvement that allowed the Stretch Database feature to stretch a table to an Azure SQL Database. Effective July 9, 2024, the supporting Azure service, known as SQL Server Stretch Database edition, is retired. Impacted versions of SQL Server include SQL Server 2022, 2019, 2017, and 2016.  

In July 2024, SQL Server Stretch Database will be discontinued for SQL Server 2022, 2019, 2017, and 2016. We understand that retiring an Azure service may impact your current workload and use of Stretch Database. Therefore, we kindly request that you either migrate to Azure or bring their data back from Azure to your on-premises version of SQL Server. Additionally, if you’re exploring alternatives for archiving data to cold and warm storage in the cloud, we’ve introduced significant new capabilities in SQL Server 2022, leveraging its data virtualization suite. 

The path forward 

SQL Server 2022 supports a concept named CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE AS SELECT (CETaS). It can help customers archive and store cold data to Azure Storage. The data will be stored in an open source file format named Parquet. It operates well with complex data in large volumes. With its performant data compression, it turns out to be one of the most cost-effective data storage solutions. Using OneLake shortcuts, customers then can leverage Microsoft Fabric to realize cloud-scale analytics on archived data.  

Our priority is to empower our SQL Server customers with the tools and services that leverage the latest and greatest from Azure. If you need assistance in exploring how Microsoft can best empower your hybrid data archiving needs, please contact us.

New solution FAQs

What’s CETaS? 

Creates an external table and then exports, in parallel, the results of a Transact-SQL SELECT statement. 

• Azure Synapse Analytics and Analytics Platform System support Hadoop or Azure Blob Storage.
• SQL Server 2022 (16.x) and later versions support CETaS to create an external table and then export, in parallel, the result of a Transact-SQL SELECT statement to Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, Azure Storage Account v2, and S3-compatible object storage. 

What is Fabric? 

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. Fabric offers a comprehensive suite of services including Data engineering, Data Factory, Data Science, Real-Time Analytics, Data Warehouse, and Databases. 

With Fabric, you don’t need to assemble different services from multiple vendors. Instead, it offers a seamlessly integrated, user-friendly platform that simplifies your analytics requirements. Operating on a software as a service (SaaS) model, Fabric brings simplicity and integration to your solutions. 

Fabric integrates separate components into a cohesive stack. Instead of relying on different databases or data warehouses, you can centralize data storage with Microsoft OneLake. AI capabilities are seamlessly embedded within Fabric, eliminating the need for manual integration. With Fabric, you can easily transition your raw data into actionable insights for business users. 

What is OneLake shortcuts?  

Shortcuts in OneLake allow you to unify your data across domains, clouds, and accounts by creating a single virtual data lake for your entire enterprise. All Fabric experiences and analytical engines can directly connect to your existing data sources such as Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and OneLake through a unified namespace. OneLake manages all permissions and credentials, so you don’t need to separately configure each Fabric workload to connect to each data source. Additionally, you can use shortcuts to eliminate edge copies of data and reduce process latency associated with data copies and staging. 

Shortcuts are objects in OneLake that point to other storage locations. The location can be internal or external to OneLake. The location that a shortcut points to is known as the target path of the shortcut. The location where the shortcut appears is known as the shortcut path. Shortcuts appear as folders in OneLake and any workload or service that has access to OneLake can use them. Shortcuts behave like symbolic links. They’re an independent object from the target. If you delete a shortcut, the target remains unaffected. If you move, rename, or delete a target path, the shortcut can break. 

Learn more 

• Stretch Database
• Deprecated database engine features in SQL Server 2022
• Install an on-premises data gateway
• SQL Server in Microsoft Fabric? Use CETaS to move data!
• OneLake shortcuts
• CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE AS SELECT (CETaS)

Microsoft Fabric

Bring your data into the era of AI

Explore solutions

The post Announcing the retirement of SQL Server Stretch Database appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

This blog has been updated to reflect the new billing options now available for versions of SQL Server 2014 and above.

In the face of changing market conditions and pressure to accelerate growth, the ability for customers to do more with less is critical. And while the cloud has long been the north star for realizing efficiencies and accelerating innovation, at Microsoft, we understand that these benefits also need to happen outside of the cloud. In 2021 we announced the general availability of Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance. Previously only available in Azure, Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance allows customers to build new cloud native applications on any infrastructure, in their on-premises environments and across other public clouds. Now, we are offering a way for customers to make the most of their legacy applications, with Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server.

Yesterday, we announced the general availability of SQL Server 2022, the latest milestone in the 30 year history of SQL Server. This newest edition of SQL Server delivers continued innovation with new hybrid and multicloud capabilities that allow customers to manage and protect their SQL environments in more ways than ever before, no migration required. Together with these innovations, we are also introducing a consumption-based cloud billing model to purchase SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc.

Bring Azure Innovation to SQL Servers Anywhere

Azure Arc is a bridge that extends the Azure platform to help customers build applications and services with the flexibility to run on-premises, at the edge, and in multicloud environments. With Azure Arc, customers can manage their entire SQL estate through a single pane of glass and delivers multilayered security and improved data governance through a single integrated solution.

When customers enable Azure Arc on SQL servers, they can unlock more robust functionalities:

Manage

Manage their entire SQL estate in the Azure portal and get a single, unified view into their entire SQL Server estate to better manage inventory and licenses. Leverage SQL Best Practice Analyzer to automatically evaluate SQL Server environments for performance, scalability, and business continuity, all with no additional cost.​

Govern

Microsoft Purview is a family of data governance, risk, and compliance solutions that can help organizations govern, protect, and manage their environments. With Azure Arc, SQL Server customers will have Purview access policies readily available for those on-premises environments to centralize insights and governance across their entire data estate.

Secure

We also enabled Microsoft Defender for Cloud for SQL Server. Microsoft Defender enhances the security posture of a customer’s SQL Server environments, no matter where they reside. Microsoft Defender continuously scans and proactively identifies any vulnerabilities or attacks that are happening within SQL Server environments. This multi-layered security is made possible through Azure Arc, so data is protected both at the powerful database engine level and by Azure security capabilities from the cloud. 

SQL Server 2022 customers will also be able to benefit from Single Sign-On with Azure Active Directory to secure identities. These are security capabilities that customers have asked for in their on-premises environments for a long time and we are excited to be able to bring them to our SQL server customers.​

Cloud billing model for all SQL workloads*

We are excited to provide customers with a new consumption-based, cloud billing model that provides flexibility to innovate quickly and save on costs. With Pay-as-you-go billing on SQL Server, customers can benefit from:

• Flexibility to choose between consumption-based licensing or the perpetual SQL Server licenses.
• Improved cost efficiencies for both Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition. Eliminate the need to pay full upfront licenses and pay for only what is used, by the hour, which is ideal for spike workloads or ad-hoc usage.
• Support for multicloud and hybrid deployments with consistent billing for all a customer’s entire SQL environment, no matter where they reside.

The PAYG model is enabled by Azure Arc, so connection of the SQL Server to Azure via Azure Arc is required. For SQL Server 2022 customers, the Azure Arc connection is a default part of the SQL Server 2022 setup process and the PAYG billing is available. For customers with prior versions of SQL Server (2014 editions and above), this billing model is available in the Azure Portal once an Azure Arc connection is established. Pricing for the new pay-as-you-go options can be found here.

Innovate anywhere with Azure Arc today​

Azure Arc was built to bring Azure innovation anywhere. With this week’s announcements, our SQL Server customers can unlock cloud-native features on-premises, while benefiting from a more secure and streamlined management experience for their SQL Server environments, no matter where they reside. For SQL Server 2022 customers, these benefits will come already integrated with SQL Server. But customers with SQL Server 2014 and above can unlock many of the same innovations with the help of Azure Arc.

With Azure Arc, SQL Server customers will be able to maximize the value of their investments with technology that allows them to do more with less.

Learn more

Learn about the general availability for SQL Server 2022: general availability for SQL Server 2022.

• More on the latest billing model and how enable Arc for SQL Server. 
• View pricing for SQL Server 2022 and the new pay-as-go options.
• Read more about Azure Arc.

The post Manage, govern, and secure all your SQL Servers with new hybrid capabilities enabled by Azure Arc  appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

1. It’s consistent

Microsoft is a truly consistent hybrid platform, with the same code base across on-premises, Azure, and Azure Stack. With Azure Stack, you can extend Azure services and capabilities to on-premises environments without any code changes. Interoperability between SQL Server, SQL Server in an Azure Virtual Machine, and Azure SQL Database ensures business continuity and you can easily set up disaster recovery through Always On availability groups.

Download the Azure Stack datasheet

Set up disaster recovery for SQL Server

2. It’s frictionless

The task of migrating your databases to the cloud can be daunting. Microsoft can help you manage the migration seamlessly with several tools and services that simplify the process with minimal downtime. SQL Database Managed Instance provides easy re-hosting with no code changes, enabling a way to migrate huge databases into Azure without changing any code and staying compliant with your applications, without sacrificing performance.

Get started with SQL Database Managed Instance

Learn more about migrating a SQL Server database to SQL in Azure Virtual Machines

3. It’s cost-effective

SQL Server and Azure SQL Database are two of the most cost-effective hybrid data platforms with flexible pricing tiers. Leverage your on-premises licenses and migrate your Windows Server and SQL Server workloads to Azure and save with the Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB). You can choose from different purchasing options and service tiers to fit your performance and cost needs.

Calculate your savings here with the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculator

Allscripts, a leading healthcare software manufacturer, started using Microsoft Azure. In just three weeks, the company lifted and shifted dozens of acquired applications running on 1,000 virtual machines to Azure – migrating their on-premises applications to the cloud by taking advantage of Azure SQL Database Managed Instance.

“Using Azure has dramatically accelerated both our acquisition time and our new product development time. We’ve been able to shut down older, inefficient datacenters and focus more resources on developing great software. This is one factor that moves us ahead in a very competitive market.” – Peter Tomlinson, Director of IS, Technology Operations, Allscripts

Learn more about Allscripts’ hybrid data story

Try SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machine or SQL Database Managed Instance today, and manage your data seamlessly across on-premises and cloud.

The post Three reasons to choose Microsoft for your hybrid data platform appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

Data is the core of modern applications. Two key trends that help organizations extract the most from their data are the adoption of cloud technologies and the ability to drive new customer experiences with artificial intelligence. Organizations that modernize and harness data, cloud, and AI outperform their competition and are becoming leaders in their field. The most digitally transformed enterprises earn an additional $100 million in operating income!

Join our speakers Claudia Backus, Prem Prakash, and Frederico Rezende for a webinar on how you can transform your applications and enable new customer experiences using the Microsoft data platform.

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

• How to leverage the performance, security and flexibility of the entire Microsoft database portfolio from SQL Server 2017 and Azure SQL Database to open-source databases like Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL.
• How to accelerate your move towards a cloud-based application with the new Azure Database Migration Service.
• How the Microsoft Data Accelerator program can help you modernize your apps across on-premise and cloud.

Register now for this webinar to find out how Microsoft can help you successfully transform your existing applications and ultimately become a SaaS provider with cloud technologies.

The post Webinar: Modernize your applications with cloud and on-premises data solutions from Microsoft appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

There’s never been a better time to start migrating your database to the cloud. Getting ahead in business today means moving to the cloud so that your company can grow and succeed.

The Azure Database Migration Service Public Preview is the quickest and easiest way for businesses to migrate on-premises databases to the cloud. It’s a fully managed migration service designed to work together with our time-tested migration engines such as the Data Migration Assistant, the Database Experimentation Assistant, and SQL Server Migration Assistant. These tools are tuned to ensure the best migration experience, whether upgrading from legacy versions of Microsoft SQL Server or moving from sources such as Oracle, Sybase, DB2, MySQL, and others. The new service uses a guided, easy-to-implement process to streamline tasks. Regular operations can continue normally during the migration.

Azure Database Migration Service Public Preview uses this functionality to provide rich orchestration capabilities that enable you to organize your databases into project(s) and perform source assessment, schema and data conversion, and validation activities. These activities can be assigned to one or more compute nodes to meet your budget and timeframe goals. With these capabilities, Azure Database Migration Service Public Preview makes it easy to plan migration tasks, run proof-of-concept migrations, author scripting for automation, and ensure that your final production migration to the Microsoft Data Platform is friction-free.

All these capabilities allow you to focus on what’s important for your business and accelerate your Data Estate transformation with the cloud. Now is a great time to find out more about how to make your organization’s database migration as smooth and seamless as possible. For a broad scope of information about cloud migration in general, visit the Azure Migration Center.

Most importantly, be sure to take advantage of the Azure Database Migration Service Public Preview today.

The post Azure Database Migration Service Public Preview brings the “lift and shift” appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

Today at PASS Summit 2017, we are showcasing new advances across SQL Server 2017 and our Azure data services. And we’re demonstrating how these products – both on-premises and in the cloud – come together to form the ultimate hybrid data platform. Our recent announcements, here at PASS Summit and at Ignite in September are great examples of how we’re empowering data professionals – like our community here at PASS Summit 2017 – to do more and achieve more.

With the recent launch of SQL Server 2017, the first database with AI built-in, you can now run your production workloads on Linux, Windows, and Docker. SQL Server 2017 delivers a mission-critical database with everything built-in, on the platform of your choice. And, it can unlock seamless DevOps with Docker Enterprise Edition containers, bringing efficiency and simplicity to your innovation. New features enable analysis of graph data, and advanced analytics using Python and R. We have incorporated your feedback to add features that will make your day-to-day job easier like Adaptive Query Processing and Automatic Plan Correction by finding and fixing performance regressions automatically.

In addition, SQL Server 2017 running on Windows and Linux can take advantage of new leaps forward in hardware. As demonstrated today by Bob Ward, SQL Server 2017 on SUSE Enterprise Linux Server on an HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen 10 Server with scalable persistent memory ran queries more than 5 times faster than a fast SSD drive array at 50% of the cost – making it the world’s first enterprise-grade diskless database server.

These new cross-platform capabilities have made SQL Server accessible to users of Windows, Linux and Mac. At PASS Summit, we are excited to provide a sneak peek at Microsoft SQL Operations Studio. In a few weeks, users will be able to download and evaluate this free, light-weight tool for modern database development and operations on Windows, Mac or Linux machines for SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, and Azure SQL Data Warehouse. Increase your productivity with smart T-SQL code snippets and customizable dashboards to monitor and quickly detect performance bottlenecks in your SQL databases on-premises or in Azure. You’ll be able to leverage your favorite command line tools like Bash, PowerShell, sqlcmd, bcp and ssh in the Integrated Terminal window. Users can contribute directly to SQL Operations Studio via pull requests from the GitHub repository.

For customers who are ready to modernize to the cloud, Azure SQL Database Managed Instance and Azure Database Migration Service, both now in private preview, making it easy to lift-and-shift your on-premises SQL Server workloads with few or no changes. The upcoming Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server enables customers to use on-premises SQL Server licenses for the easiest lift and shift of SQL Server workloads to the fully-managed cloud.

Azure SQL Database is ready for your most mission-critical workloads. Today, we demonstrated the high scale and performance of SQL Database, with the ability to insert 1.4 million rows per second. In addition, we are making it easier than ever to gain insights from data at this scale. We recently made generally available, the ability to run advanced analytics models from Azure Machine Learning super-fast from T-SQL, with new Native T-SQL scoring. And in today’s demos, we show how you can use this new capability to score large amounts of data in real time – at an average of under 20ms per row!

Starting in early 2016, we have been delivering machine-learning based customer value directly into the Azure SQL Database managed service. More recently, we’ve delivered several intelligent capabilities including automatic tuning, performance monitoring and tuning, Adaptive Query Processing, and Threat Detection. These capabilities significantly reduce time requires to manage anywhere from one to thousands of databases and help proactively defend against potential threats. And the preview Vulnerability Assessment feature helps you more easily understand your security and compliance with new initiatives like GDPR.

In addition to sharing the same “everything built-in” SKU model with SQL Server for lower total cost of ownership versus competitors, Azure SQL Database adds value to your database with these built-in administration features. Now it’s easier than ever to move to Azure SQL Database with our new partnership with Attunity. Customers can now take advantage of Attunity Replicate for Microsoft Migrations, a free offer that accelerates migrations from various database systems, including Oracle, Amazon Redshift, and PostgreSQL to the Microsoft Data Platform.

To simplify analytics in the cloud, we’re releasing a public preview of new hybrid data integration capabilities in Azure Data Factory including the ability to run SSIS packages within the service. This means you can run your SSIS data integration workloads in Azure, without changing the packages – for true hybrid data integration across on-premises and cloud. And our SSIS partner technologies like Biml can now work to automate and enhance data integration across on-premises and cloud.

Dramatic scale investments are now in public preview for Azure SQL Data Warehouse. With the new Compute-Optimized Tier, you can get up to 100x the performance and 5x the scale. This new tier builds on the existing optimized for elasticity tier – giving customers the benefit of a fully-managed platform that suits the demands of their workload.

Visualizing data helps users across the organization take informed action. Microsoft delivers Business Intelligence capabilities to help customers model, analyze, and deliver business insights, which can be consumed by business users on mobile devices, on the web or embedded in applications.

Analysis Services helps you transform complex data into semantic models making it easy for business users to understand and analyze large amounts of data across different data sources. The same enterprise-grade SQL Server Analysis Services you’ve used on-premises is also available as a fully managed service in Azure. With today’s announcement of the Scale Out feature for Azure Analysis Services, you can easily set the number of replicas for your Azure Analysis Services instances to support large numbers of concurrent users with blazing fast query performance.

Power BI is a market leading SaaS service that is easy to get started and simple to use, with data connections to many on-premises and cloud data sources. It allows users across roles and industries to go from data to insights in minutes. A recent key addition to the Power BI portfolio is Power BI Report Server. Power BI Report Server enables self-service BI and enterprise reporting, all in one on-premises solution by allowing you to manage your SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports alongside your Power BI reports. Today we announce the availability of a new version of Power BI Report Server that will enable keeping Power BI reports on-premises that connect to any data! Read more on the Power BI blog.

Microsoft’s guiding principle has been to build the highest performing, most secure, and consistent data platform for all your applications across on-premises and cloud. By joining us on this journey, you can build upon your investments in SQL Server to expand the scope of your role in your organization, from database systems to advanced analytics and artificial intelligence. We look forward to working with you!

If you aren’t with us at PASS Summit 2017 this week, you can still see the announcements and demonstrations by purchasing session recordings to stream or download and watch at home. Sign up at the PASS Summit Website.

If you’d like to learn more about the latest enhancements in the Microsoft Data Platform, visit our data platform webpage, or data platform overview on Azure.

The post SQL Server 2017 and Azure Data Services – The ultimate hybrid data platform appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

Rohan and the Microsoft Data and AI engineering teams will highlight how our customers and community have shaped the latest products and feature enhancements — many of them based on your feedback. This continuous innovation loop is how we have accelerated innovation across our products and services. But the process doesn’t focus on code, it focuses on you and your requirements. Product telemetry, technology blogs, PASS meetups, all the time and anyway we can, we want to listen to what you have to say.

The keynote will be jam-packed with practical demonstrations, giving you a chance to see your feature requests in action. In fact, there are so many great announcements and demos coming that we made a list of the Top five reasons to join us for the PASS Summit 2017 Day 1 Keynote:

1. Accelerate performance – Bob Ward will demonstrate the super fast performance that SQL Server 2017 can achieve, while Conor Cunningham will talk about why performance tuning doesn’t have to be manual drudgery anymore.
2. Get started with Dev Ops – Tobias Ternstrom and Mihaela Blendea will show you quick and painless new ways to set up a development environment, made possible by SQL Server 2017 support for Windows and Linux containers.
3. Create powerful insights in real time – Danielle Dean will demonstrate how high performance and scale in Azure SQL Database can combine with built-in AI to create new and powerful insights from IOT data.
4. Conquer analytics at scale – Community member Scott Currie, CEO of Varigence, will show you how the latest version of Azure Data Factory can combine with partner technologies like BIML to automate data movement in the cloud. Julie Strauss will show off incredible analytics performance gains made possible by the new compute-optimized tier in Azure SQL Data Warehouse.
5. Leverage business intelligence across on-premises and cloud – Christian Wade will demonstrate fast, interactive analysis over large amounts of data in Analysis Services, on-premises and in the cloud. And Riccardo Muti will showcase new features in Power BI Premium that can bring interactive reports and queries and stunning visualizations to your users, wherever your data lives.

That was just a taste of the demos that we hope will surprise you, please you, and make your life just that much easier when you take your new knowledge back to work next week. Registration for this event is almost full, but there are still a few passes left. Or, you can purchase session recordings to stream or download and watch at home. Sign up at the PASS Summit Website.

If you’d like to learn more about the latest enhancements in the Microsoft Data Platform, visit our data platform webpage, or data platform overview on Azure.

The post Top five reasons to join us for the PASS Summit 2017 Day 1 Keynote appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

Modernize to SQL Server 2017 to begin your journey to cloud

With SQL Server 2017, now on Windows, Linux, and Docker containers, you can build modern applications using the language of your choice, on-premises or in the cloud. SQL Server 2017 offers tremendous performance features for your mission-critical, intelligence, and data warehouse applications. In-Memory OLTP delivers up to 30x faster transaction processing and columnstore indexes deliver up to 100x faster analytical processing. In addition to these features, SQL Server also owns the top TPC-H performance benchmarks for data warehouse.¹ With SQL Server 2017, you can inject intelligence into your applications with transformative insights and real-time analytics at up to one million R predictions per second. Leverage these latest enhancements while protecting your application data with the least-vulnerable database over the last seven years.¹

Modernize on-premises SQL Server or Oracle apps to Azure SQL Database

Seamlessly transform your on-premises apps to SaaS solutions at a cost-effective scale, with flexible performance and unmatched PaaS capabilities, using Azure SQL Database. Azure SQL Database is a fully-managed relational database-as-a-service that you can use to build data-driven applications in the programming language of your choice. It includes features like provisioning and resizing, built-in high availability (HA), automatic backup, point-in-time-restore, and active geo-replication. In addition to the benefits of PaaS, Azure SQL Database also includes built-in intelligence that helps you dramatically reduce the costs of running and managing databases and maximizes both the performance and security of your applications.

Leverage open source investments by modernizing on-premises apps to Azure SQL Database for MySQL and PostgreSQL

Microsoft Azure is the first-class cloud platform for open source technology that empowers you to bring the tools you love, along with the skills you already have, to build and deploy any application. With Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL, you can now choose your favorite database engine delivered as a fully-managed service with high-availability and dynamic scalability. These services bring the community version of PostgreSQL and MySQL to the cloud, and seamlessly integrate with most common open source programming languages (such as PHP, Python, and Node.js) and application development frameworks (such as WordPress, Magento, Drupal, Django, and Ruby on Rails). If you want to quickly build and deploy a new app, you can now take advantage of managed service capabilities offered by Azure while continuing to use the familiar community tools with your MySQL or PostgreSQL databases.

Lift and shift on-premises SQL Server apps to the cloud with Azure SQL Database Managed Instance

SQL Database Managed Instance is an expansion of the existing Azure SQL Database service designed to quickly and easily move your SQL apps to a fully-managed PaaS, without re-designing your application. Azure SQL Database Managed Instance provides high compatibility with on-premises SQL Server programming model and out-of-box support and tools to manage data and enable new scenarios in the cloud for your applications. This includes features like SQL CLR, SQL Server Agent, and cross-database querying. Using a fully-managed PaaS database frees your IT overhead, dramatically reducing operational costs and redirecting resources to more value-add activities. Azure SQL Database Managed Instance is scheduled to be available for public preview later this fall.

Apply to our Microsoft Data Accelerator program to upgrade your on-premises applications or begin the journey to migrate them to the cloud. The Microsoft Data Accelerator provides access to highly reliable, automated upgrade services for the four scenarios highlighted above. Backed by the rich experience of upgrading thousands of applications, Microsoft Data Accelerator enables you to modernize your applications and provide a broader range of platform choices to your customers.

Learn more and apply for the Microsoft Data Accelerator Program.

¹According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, SQL Server has had the fewest security vulnerabilities over the past seven years when compared with other major database vendors.

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