Azure SQL Devs’ Corner
Voices from the Azure SQL PM Team, focusing on development and developers
Latest posts
Announcing the General Availability (GA) of JSON data type & JSON aggregates…
We are excited to announce the General Availability (GA) of the native JSON data type and JSON aggregates - JSON_OBJECTAGG & JSON_ARRAYAGG. You can use the JSON data type and JSON aggregates to integrate and work with JSON documents more efficiently in the database. This functionality is available in Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance with the Always-up-to-date update policy. The functionality is also available in SQL Server 2025 preview. Native JSON data type The native JSON data type stores JSON documents in a binary format that the database engine can manage efficiently. The JSON data type is...
Unlocking the Power of Regex in SQL Server
Regular expressions, or regex, are powerful tools for text manipulation and pattern matching. They are incredibly useful in various scenarios, such as data validation, extraction, and transformation. SQL Server 2025 introduces native support for regex functions, making it easier to perform complex text operations directly within SQL queries. This Regex support is available in SQL Server 2025 public preview, Azure SQL Database, SQL DB in Fabric, and Azure SQL Managed Instance. The table-valued functions (TVFs) are currently available on SQL Server 2025 public preview however they will follow on other offerings as ...
MSSQL Extension for VS Code: New UI Goes GA and GitHub Copilot Enters Preview
The SQL development experience is taking a major leap forward with the MSSQL Extension for VS Code. The MSSQL extension is evolving to meet the needs of modern developers, bringing powerful, intelligent, and intuitive capabilities directly into your daily workflow. With this release, we’re announcing the general availability of the enhanced UI and the public preview of GitHub Copilot integration. Together, these updates streamline how developers connect to databases, write queries, and manage schema objects—whether you’re working locally with SQL Server 2025 or in the cloud with Azure SQL or SQL Database in Fabr...
Avoid T-SQL anti-patterns with the free T-SQL analysis tool
T-SQL Analyzer is a free, open-source, cross platform command line tool for identifying, and reporting the presence of anti-patterns and design issues in SQL Server T-SQL scripts. As a database developer, you can catch any potential bad practices and design problems very early in the project process - this ensures a frictionless path to deployment from development and test environments to production. The tool evaluates your scripts with more than 140 rules for design, naming and performance issues. The rules are created by Microsoft and the SQL Server community. If you already maintain your SQL scripts ...
Efficiently and Elegantly Modeling Embeddings in Azure SQL and SQL Server
Storing and querying text embeddings in a database it might seem challenging, but with the right schema design, it's not only possible, it's powerful. Whether you’re building AI-powered search, semantic filtering, or recommendation features, embeddings, and thus vectors, are now a first-class data type. So how do you model them well inside a database like SQL Server and Azure SQL? In this post, I’ll walk you through a practical, scalable strategy to store embeddings effectively—while keeping your schema clean, your queries readable, and your operations efficient. This blog post is part of a series of blogs ...
MSSQL Extension for VS Code: Introducing Schema Compare (Preview)
Overview We are excited to introduce Schema Compare in the MSSQL Extension for VS Code! It can be tedious to manually manage and synchronize different database versions. Enter Schema Compare, the powerful new feature for MSSQL in VS Code that transforms this tedious task into a seamless experience. With intuitive visualization that instantly highlights additions, removals, and modifications between schemas, you gain complete control over which changes to implement. Whether comparing live databases, dacpac files, or SQL projects, Schema Compare empowers you to synchronize database versions with precision and c...
Predictable LLM results with Structured Output and sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint
OpenAI recently introduced a powerful new feature for developers: structured output using JSON Schema via the parameter. This makes it possible to request responses from a GPT-4o model that strictly match a given schema—no free-text, no guesswork. If you're working with Azure SQL, this is a game-changer. Combined with the stored procedure and SQL Server's built-in JSON functions, you can now: What Is Structured Output? By default, LLMs like GPT-4 return free-form text—which can be difficult to parse reliably. With structured output, you provide a JSON Schema along with your request, and the m...
Enhancing Search Capabilities in SQL Server and Azure SQL with Hybrid Search and RRF Re-Ranking
In today's data-driven world, delivering precise and contextually relevant search results is critical. SQL Server and Azure SQL Database now enable this through Hybrid Search—a technique that combines traditional full-text search with modern vector similarity search. This allows developers to build intelligent, AI-powered search experiences directly inside the database engine. Funny enough one of the key algorithms needed for implementing Hybrid Search, BM25, has been included in SQL Server is almost forever, without much fanfare: RAG pattern and similarity search is bringing it to the light. What Is Hybrid S...
SQL Conf() 2025 Highlights: So Much Developer Innovation!
For decades, SQL Server has been a cornerstone of data management, evolving to meet the needs of modern developers. What began as a traditional relational engine is now a cloud-enabled, AI-integrated platform designed for building real-world applications. SQL Server continues to meet developers where they are—offering tools, services, and capabilities that simplify complexity and support innovation across the stack. SQL Conf() 2025, held February 26, was a developer marathon built specifically for application developers. While DBAs and data engineers often lead the conversation, this event flipped the focu...