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There is a SQL Server 2025 Blog Series for you to keep up.

Here are the big improvements, now in public preview. Most of this is from Microsoft.com learn documentation. At the end, see how Azure Arc can enhance capabilities for on-premises or other-cloud workloads.

AI & Vector Features

New feature or update	Details
Copilot in SQL Server Management Studio	Ask questions. Get answers from your data.
Vector data type	Store vector data optimized for operations such as similarity search and machine learning applications. Vectors are stored in an optimized binary format but are exposed as JSON arrays for convenience. Each element of the vector can be stored either using a single-precision (4-byte) or half-precision (2-byte) floating-point value.
Vector functions	New scalar functions perform operations on vectors in binary format, allowing applications to store and manipulate vectors in the SQL Database Engine.
Vector index	Create and manage approximate vector indexes to quickly and efficiently find similar vectors to a given reference vector. Query vector indexes from sys.vector_indexes. Requires PREVIEW_FEATURES database scoped configuration.
Manage external AI models	Manage external AI model objects for embedding tasks (creating vector arrays) accessing REST AI inference endpoints.

Developer Enhancements

New feature or update	Details
Change event streaming	Capture and publish incremental DML changes of data (such as updates, inserts, and deletes) in near real-time. Change event streaming sends details of data changes such as the schema, previous values, and new values to Azure Event Hubs in a simple CloudEvent, serialized as either native JSON or Avro Binary. Requires PREVIEW_FEATURES database scoped configuration.
Fuzzy string matching	Check if two strings are similar, and calculate the difference between two strings.
Regular expressions	Define a search pattern for text with a sequence of characters. Query SQL Server with regex to find, replace, or validate text data.
Regular expressions functions	Match complex patterns and manipulate data in SQL Server with regular expressions.
External REST endpoint invocation	Call REST/GraphQL endpoints from other Azure services from the SQL Database. With a quick call to the system stored procedure sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint, you can: – Have data processed via an Azure Function – Update a Power BI dashboard – Call a local, in-house enterprise REST endpoint – Talk to Azure OpenAI Services
JSON data in SQL Server	Use SQL Server built-in functions and operators to: – Parse JSON text and read or modify values. – Transform arrays of JSON objects into table format. – Run any Transact-SQL query on the converted JSON objects. – Format the results of Transact-SQL queries in JSON format. – Review examples at: JSON data type: Store JSON in a native binary format.
Batch mode optimizations for built-in functions	Performance improvements for the following built-in functions: – Mathematical functions – DATETRUNC
New Chinese collations	Version 160 to support GB18030-2022 standard.

New SQL Developer Editions

Analytics

New feature or update	Details
Connect to ODBC data sources with PolyBase on SQL Server on Linux	Supports ODBC data sources for SQL Server on Linux.
Native support for specific source types	PolyBase services no longer required for parquet, Delta, or CSV.
TDS 8.0 support for PolyBase	When you use Features of the Microsoft ODBC Driver for SQL Server on Windows for PolyBase, TDS 8.0 is available for SQL Server as an external data source.
PolyBase support for managed identity	Use managed identity to communicate to Microsoft Azure Blob Storage and Microsoft Azure Data Lake Storage.

Availability and Disaster Recovery

New feature or update	Details
Always On availability groups
Availability group asynchronous page request dispatching improvement	Perform asynchronous page requests and in batches during failover recovery. Enabled by default.
Allow database to switch to resolving state	After a failure to read the persisted configuration data due to network service interruption.
Configure AG group commit wait in milliseconds	Set availability group commit time in milliseconds for an availability group replica so that transactions are sent to the secondary replica faster.
Control communication flow for availability groups	A new sp_configure option lets the primary replica determine if the secondary replica falls behind. With the new configuration option, you can optimize communication between HADR endpoints.
Distributed AG support for a contained AG	Configure a distributed availability group between two contained availability groups.
Distributed AG synchronization improvements	Improves synchronization performance by reducing network saturation when the global primary and forwarder replicas are in asynchronous commit mode.
Fast failover for persistent AG health issues	Set the RestartThreshold for an Always On availability group to 0, which tells the WSFC to fail over the availability group resource immediately when a persistent health issue is detected.
Improved health check timeout diagnostics	Improves synchronization performance by reducing network saturation when the global primary and forwarder replicas are in asynchronous commit mode. This change is enabled by default and doesn’t require any configuration.
REMOVE listener IP address	New parameter in the ALTER AVAILABILITY GROUP Transact-SQL command lets you remove an IP address from a listener without deleting the listener.
Set NONE for read-only or read-write routing	When configuring READ_WRITE_ROUTING_URL and READ_ONLY_ROUTING_URL, you can set to NONE to revert specified routing by using the ALTER AVAILABILITY GROUP Transact-SQL command to automatically route traffic back to the primary replica.
Configure TLS 1.3 encryption with TDS 8.0	Configure TLS 1.3 encryption for communication between the Windows Server Failover Cluster and an Always On availability group replica with TDS 8.0 support.
Always On failover cluster instance
Configure TLS 1.3 encryption with TDS 8.0	Configure TLS 1.3 encryption for communication between the Windows Server Failover Cluster and Always On failover cluster instance (FCI) with TDS 8.0 support.
Backups
Back up to immutable blob storage	Available when backing up to URL.
Back up on secondary replicas	In addition to copy-only backups, you can now also perform full and differential backups on any secondary replica.
Log shipping
Configure TLS 1.3 encryption with TDS 8.0	Configure TLS 1.3 encryption for communication between servers in a log shipping topology.

Intelligent Query Processing: Contains various improvements aimed at optimizing query execution and overall database performance.

Query Store Enhancements: Now includes the capability to block problematic queries using ABORT_QUERY_EXECUTION, helping maintain system stability and performance.

Security

New feature or update	Details
Security cache improvements	Invalidates caches for only a specific login. When security cache entries are invalidated, only those entries belonging to the affected login are affected. This improvement minimizes the impact of non-cache permissions validation for unaffected login users.
OAEP padding mode support for RSA encryption	Support for certificates and asymmetric keys, adding security layers to encryption and decryption processes.
PBKDF for password hashes on by default	Uses PBKDF2 for password hashes by default, enhancing password security and helping customers comply with NIST SP 800-63b.
Managed identity with Microsoft Entra authentication	Can use the Arc-enabled server managed identity in outbound connections to communicate with Azure resources, and inbound connections for external users to connect to SQL Server. Requires SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc.
Back up to/restore from URL with managed identity	Back up to, or restore from, URL with a managed identity. Requires SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc.
Managed Identity support for Extensible Key Management with Azure Key Vault	Supported for EKM with AKV and Managed Hardware Security Modules (HSM). Requires SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc.
Create Microsoft Entra logins and users with nonunique display names	Support for the T-SQL syntax WITH OBJECT_ID when using the CREATE LOGIN or CREATE USER statement.
Support custom password policy on Linux	Enforce a custom password policy for SQL authentication logins on SQL Server on Linux.
Configure TLS 1.3 encryption with TDS 8.0 support	TLS 1.3 encryption added with TDS 8 for the following features: – SQL Server Agent – sqlcmd utility – bcp utility – SQL Writer service – Configure usage and diagnostic data collection for SQL Server (CEIP) – Data virtualization with PolyBase in SQL Server – Always On availability groups – Always On failover cluster instances (FCI) – Linked servers – Transactional replication – Merge replication – Peer-to-peer – Snapshot replication – Log shipping Review Breaking changes.

Database Engine

New feature or update	Details
Optimized locking	Reduces blocking and lock memory consumption, and avoids lock escalation.
tempdb space resource governance	Improves reliability and avoids outages by preventing runaway workloads from consuming a large amount of space in tempdb. Supports percent-based limits.
Accelerated database recovery in tempdb	Provides the benefits of accelerated database recovery for transactions in the tempdb database, such as transactions that use temporary tables.
Persisted statistics for readable secondaries	Creates persisted statistics on readable secondaries so that workloads that run against secondary replicas are optimized.
Change tracking improvements	Adaptive shallow cleanup improves change tracking auto cleanup performance.
Columnstore improvements	Multiple improvements in columnstore indexes: – Ordered nonclustered columnstore indexes – Online index build and improved sort quality for ordered columnstore indexes – Improved shrink operations when clustered columnstore indexes are present
Memory-optimized container and filegroup removal	Supports removal of memory-optimized containers and filegroups when all In-Memory OLTP objects are deleted.
tmpfs support for tempdb on Linux	Enable and run tempdb on tmpfs for SQL Server on Linux.
ZSTD Backup compression algorithm	SQL Server 2025 (17.x) Preview adds a faster and more effective backup compression algorithm – ZSTD.
Optimized sp_executesql	Effectively reduce the impact of compilation storms. A compilation storm is a situation where a large number of queries is being compiled simultaneously, leading to performance issues and resource contention. Enable this feature to allow invocations of sp_executesql to behave like objects such as stored procedures and triggers from a compilation perspective. Allowing batches which use sp_executesql to serialize the compilation process reduces the impact of compilation storms.
Time-bound extended event sessions	Automatically stops an extended events session after a time limit elapses. This helps avoid situations where sessions might be left running indefinitely by mistake, consuming resources and potentially generating a large amount of data.
PREVIEW_FEATURES	Database scoped configuration allows you to enable features that are scheduled for general availability after this version of SQL Server releases for general availability. Review these features in release notes.

Query Store and intelligent query processing

The intelligent query processing (IQP) feature family includes features that improve the performance of existing workloads with minimal implementation effort.

New feature or update	Details
Cardinality estimation feedback for expressions	Learns from previous executions of expressions across queries. Finds appropriate cardinality estimation (CE) model choices and applies to future executions of those expressions.
Optional parameter plan optimization (OPPO)	Leverages the adaptive plan optimization (Multiplan) infrastructure that was introduced with the Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization (PSPO) improvement, which generates multiple plans from a single statement. This allows the feature to make different assumptions depending on the parameter values used in the query.
Degree of parallelism (DOP) feedback	Now on by default.
Query Store for readable secondaries	Now on by default.
ABORT_QUERY_EXECUTION query hint	Blocks future execution of known problematic queries, for example nonessential queries affecting application workloads.

T-SQL Language

Lots of new language related to the AI features, JSON, etc.

Linux

• Support for TLS 1.3
• Support for Red Hat 10 in preview
• Support for Ubuntu 24.04 in preview

Microsoft Fabric Integration: Offers a unified analytics platform that integrates various data and analytics services to streamline operations.

New feature or update	Details
Mirroring in Fabric	Continuously replicate data to Microsoft Fabric from SQL Server 2025 on-premises. Microsoft Fabric already includes mirroring from a variety of sources, including Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance. For more information on SQL Server 2025 database mirroring to Fabric, see Mirrored SQL Server databases in Microsoft Fabric.

Starting in SQL Server 2025 (17.x) Preview, on-premises reporting services is consolidated under Power BI Report Server. For more information, see Reporting Services consolidation FAQ.

Discontinued Features

Data Quality Services (DQS) is discontinued in this version of SQL Server. We continue to support DQS in SQL Server 2022 (16.x) and earlier versions.

Master Data Services (MDS) is discontinued in this version of SQL Server. We continue to support MDS in SQL Server 2022 (16.x) and earlier versions.

Synapse Link is discontinued in this version of SQL Server. Use Mirroring in Fabric instead. For more information, see Mirroring in Fabric – What’s new.

Breaking Changes

SQL Server 2025 (17.x) Preview introduces breaking changes to a few SQL Server Database Engine features, such as linked servers, replication, log shipping, and PolyBase.

For more information, see Breaking changes in SQL Server 2025 Preview.

Learn more

• Microsoft Build 2025: SQL Server 2025: The Database Developer Reimagined
• Docs: aka.ms/Build/sql2025docs
• Announcement blog: aka.ms/sqlserver2025
• SQL Server homepage: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server
• MSSQL Extension for Visual Studio Code with GitHub Copilot:  https://aka.ms/vscode-mssql-copilot

Microsoft has Azure Arc to enhance your on-prem or other-cloud capabilities with some Azure features:

Azure Arc for SQL Server 2025 – Key Benefits

Feature	Description
Centralized Management	Manage all SQL instances (on-prem, edge, multi-cloud) from the Azure portal.
Inventory & Insights	Unified view of versions, editions, and compliance across environments.
Security & Governance	Entra ID integration for MFA/SSO, apply Azure Policy for consistent security. Extended security updates delivery.
Operational Efficiency	Automated backups, patching, and best-practice assessments.
Hybrid Flexibility	Pay-as-you-go licensing for SQL components (DB Engine, SSAS, SSRS, PBIRS) and centralized view of Licenses
Migration Acceleration	Continuous assessments, real-time replication, and Copilot-assisted provisioning.
Azure Integration	Use Azure Monitor, Defender for Cloud, and other services without moving data.
Learn more	SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc
	Azure Arc overview

As always, we have lots of learning resources available to help you!