Getting Started with

SQL Server 2025

author: Hristo Hristov | updated 2025.02.03

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On November 19, 2024, Microsoft announced the
release of SQL Server 2025 in a public blog post on the
data platform blog. The next day following the
announcement, an in-depth session at the Ignite
conference was given. This is big news coming at a
time when the hype around GenAI and large language
models (LLMs) could not be more widespread. Still,
not a lot is known about this newest SQL Server
release; however, Microsoft has lifted the curtain on
Problem
some of the new and exciting features centered
around AI and performance improvements.
In this paper, we are thrilled to provide an overview of
the new features and how to get started with SQL
Server 2025.

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If there is one key phrase about the new SQL Server
2025 release it is AI integration. The newest SQL Server
version comes with enhanced built-in AI capabilities as
well as options to manage and integrate with outside
services. Another strong adoption motivator could be
the increased performance and enterprise readiness
thanks to an improved query optimizer and locking
management mechanisms.

Solution
SQL Server 2025 will come with unmatched-to-this-
day levels of Azure integration enabling “ground-to-
cloud.” In other words, it will facilitate fully integrated
and hybrid scenarios either by using Azure Arc or
deploying to different environments. Whether you
want to use the platform on-prem, in Azure, or
particularly in Fabric, the experience has never been
more integrated.

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After examining the available announcements and
information on the new features, I must say I am
thrilled and eager to get my hands on SQL Server
2025. The platform is becoming more flexible, has
increased cross-environment support, and enables a
plethora of AI scenarios while sticking to the battle-
proven scalable database engine and familiar T-SQL.
Additionally, the experience between on-prem and
Azure versions of the product will be the most
seamless so far. There will be numerous deployment
options and what Microsoft calls “mirroring,” an Solution
advanced replication mechanism.

As of the time of writing in January 2025, SQL Server

2025 is in private preview. In Microsoft terminology
that means you can apply to potentially be selected to
evaluate the product.
To get started applying for the private preview, follow
this link.

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 SQL Server builds on its solid foundation and
successful track record related to performance and
security ever since version 7.0 came along 25 years
ago. The newest publicly available SQL Server
versions, such as 2019 and 2022, have continued to
SQL Server 2025 expand this track record adding more in terms of data
virtualization, cloud connectivity, accelerated
database recovery, and intelligent query processing.

New Features SQL Server 2025 adds valuable new AI features,

and increases enterprise readiness and performance by
infusing the Database Optimizer with AI, as well as
Enhancements provides performance improvements across the board.
In general, the new features are organized along three
areas: AI integration, enterprise readiness, and
integration with other Azure services. The following
sections will provide a list of these new features in
each area.

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 SQL Server 2025
New Features and Enhancements

Built-in AI

Enterprise Readiness

Performance and Availability

Integration with Azure

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 According to an IDC report from April 2024, in the next five
years, enterprises will develop close to one billion applications.
The same report states that over 85% of the organizations
developing these applications think that AI integration will
increase competitiveness.

Built-in AI Therefore, SQL Server 2025 is set to bring AI closer to the data
to facilitate faster development, decrease time to market, and
enable the implementation of new AI-infused business
scenarios. In short, SQL Server 2025 is now becoming AI-
enabled. According to Bob Ward’s SQL Server 2025
announcement on LinkedIn, the AI-enabled database has two
functional areas.

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 The first AI-enabled area consists of the services designed
to facilitate and nurture the development of AI-powered
apps. Microsoft believes it is easier to bring AI to your data
than vice versa. As an AI developer and data professional,
this is music to my years. I cannot wait to get hands-on
with this approach. The announced features include:
• New vector data type designed to natively store text
embeddings (the data representation that LLMs can
understand).
Built-in AI • A new system stored procedure,
sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint, to call an LLM
model using a REST API endpoint. This feature allows
us to natively use data stored in the database and
consume data generated by the LLM.
• Embedding generation and semantic chunking.
• A new T-SQL function, vector_distance, to compare
embeddings and get relevant results to pass to an
LLM.

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 Along with these core new capabilities, SQL Server 2025
will support model management using model definitions
from popular services, such as OpenAI and Azure Open AI.
Native framework integration with AI frameworks, such as
LangChain, will also be available. As someone who has
developed RAG apps, I am looking forward to trying out
these new features. A conventional approach to
Built-in AI developing an SQL-based RAG app can be examined here
and here.

Additionally, a Copilot for developers will be tightly

integrated with your database and the data inside it. With
Copilot, developers will be able to generate and validate
queries as well as extract data more easily.

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 The second area of SQL Server 2025 AI enablement
includes services designed to help you interact with your
data and manage your database. The notable features we
discovered are:

• Copilot for DBAs enabling query status checks,

database checks such as backup status and RPO.

Built-in AI • Checking outdated table stats and proposing

solutions.
• Providing recommendations for query and index
tuning.

In both AI-enabled areas, Microsoft guarantees that

neither the prompts sent to the Copilot, nor the generated
answers, will be retained for future model retraining.

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 When it comes to enterprise-readiness and scalability,
SQL Server has always been a benchmark setter.
According to Asad Khan, VP of SQL Products and Services,
97% of Fortune 500 companies use SQL Server.
Additionally, in Azure, over 45 trillion queries go through
Enterprise the SQL query optimizer databases that Microsoft
manages. These statistics mean that the stakes could not
Readiness be higher for Microsoft when releasing an updated version
of SQL Server and trying to improve it.

On that front, the following features to expand the

enterprise-readiness and developer-friendliness stand out.

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 First is the long-awaited native JSON data type and
Enterprise planned JSON index. DBAs and developers know that
currently JSON is represented as nvarchar, which does the
Readiness job but is not ideal. The new data type will allow direct
insertion of JSON documents into a column as well as
accessing JSON properties directly.

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 Next, Microsoft also announced full RegEx support in T-
SQL. As a developer, I can easily see the benefit of having
RegEx support to construct complex filters or extract
specific strings.
Enterprise Additionally, Microsoft promises to have enabled
Readiness transaction log changes consumption using Kafka or any
event streaming platform. The official name of this feature
is Change Event Streaming. This is another serious
announcement that will provide more options for CDC and
log transactions recording.

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 When it comes to performance and availability, the
announced new features span three core mission-
critical engine features.

Performance Improved Concurrency by Optimized Locking. The

optimized locking that exists in the cloud for Azure SQL
and today uses a technology that allows the avoidance of lock
escalation scenarios and excessive lock memory scenarios.
Availability The process works by locking individual rows instead of
locking whole table reads. As a result, a significant decrease
in query blocking due to locking operations is achieved. This
will be interesting to see in action and measure the
improvement over old SQL Server versions.

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 Batch Mode in the Background. Next, behind the scenes, a
lot of user queries are powered by something called “batch
mode” that remains hidden from the user. Microsoft has
managed to accelerate performance by using batch mode in
the background for improved query processing and
execution. The gains will be particularly noticeable for
Performance aggregate-type queries and scans of substantial amounts of
data in both column store and row store scenarios.
and
Availability
Automatic Failover Capabilities. Finally, when it comes to
availability, Microsoft is advertising increased availability by
decreasing requirements for manual involvement during
failover scenarios. SQL Server 2025 will bring enhanced
automatic failover functionality and improved diagnostics.

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 SQL Server 2025 steps up the game when it comes to
cloud integration. Microsoft recognizes customers still
have a fragmented data landscape where application data
Integration lives in different environments: on-prem, in Azure, or in
another public cloud. SQL Server 2025 redefines the ease
with Azure of deploying an on-prem database to the cloud or
replicating it to Fabric. Thus, SQL Server 2025 becomes a
full software-as-a-service type of database. On this front,
there are two major features.

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 Mirroring. First, SQL Server 2025 will come with something
called “mirroring.” This mechanism enables database
replication to Fabric OneLake with zero ETL and in near real-
time. With mirroring, once a database is available in Fabric,

Integration users can run queries that do joins across database,

warehouse, or lakehouse tables allowing easy data
unification.
with Azure In general, mirroring means it will be straightforward enough
to create an analytical environment in Fabric from an
operational data store living on-prem or in a virtual machine.
Thus, you can protect your operational datastore from
analytical queries.

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 Azure Arc. Next, due to the varied landscape of on-prem,
cloud, or hybrid data residency, the focus is on Azure Arc as
an enabler of the cross-environment capabilities of SQL
Server 2025. Arc acts like a bridge between on-prem or other
Integration public clouds allowing you to maintain data residency and
enabling the development of cloud-native applications in
with Azure Azure spanning multiple data sources. Developers may
remember that SQL Server 2022 was the first to come with
Arc support, but it came with limited Entra support. SQL
Server 2025 Arc support will now feature managed identity
authentication for both inbound and outbound connections.

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 Our SQL Server 2025 features overview would not be
SQL Server complete if we did not mention the upcoming SSMS 21
version. The new version was announced in early
Management November 2024 on the SQL Server blog. Here are the
exciting new features that developers have been wishing
Studio 21 for for years (and some of us had to use Azure Data
Studio in the meantime).

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 SSMS 21 will stand out with its new shell based on Visual
Studio 2022 instead of the old 2015 shell. 64-bit support
will become available as well. Support for extensions will
be the same as in SSMS 20. Additionally, Microsoft
promises to provide full support for browsing and
New Shell installing third-party extensions soon.
and
Dark Theme Another long-awaited SSMS feature is the dark theme.
This is also something I know fellow developers have
wanted for a while. That is great news especially when
coupled with the return of Git integration, also announced
for SSMS 21.

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 On the AI-front, we already mentioned that SQL Server
2025 comes with extended AI support. When it comes to
developing and managing your database, Copilot in SSMS
will be the main AI tool. From the query editor, developers
will be able to start a chat and prompt the LLM for DDL
and DML query assistance, as well as database statistics
and settings such as backups and RPO data. Additionally,
Copilot the Copilot functionality will support “bring your own
for SSMS model,” enabling advanced enterprise scenarios with
database-specific models tailored to company data and
configuration settings.

You can already try the SSMS 21 public preview version by

following this link.

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 SQL Server 2025 is currently in private preview
with a limited participation program. To express
your interest as an early adopter, use the form
here.

In terms of licensing and cost, Microsoft has

Current promised to announce the details at the time of
Release general availability (GA). Microsoft has scheduled
the GA for later in CY2025 with the precise date yet
Status to be announced. Once available, the upgrade
methods will be the same as in previous versions.
The new database compatibility level will be 170.

Microsoft will also announce separately the

deprecated features based on the private preview
feedback.

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 In conclusion, SQL Server 2025 is coming at an
exciting moment when AI technology and adoption
are booming. The new SQL Server version promises
to bring AI to the data, enable advanced operational
RAG applications, and provide numerous
performance, security, and environment agility
Conclusion upgrades.

Microsoft has scheduled the current SQL Server

2022 mainstream end date for January 2028. So, we
still have time to try out SQL Server 2025 and see
which features are the most valuable.

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 The MSSQLTips.com team will update this
document as news surfaces. Please check back for
new versions.

• The year ahead for SQL Server 2025

• Announcing Microsoft SQL Server 2025
Next Steps • SQL Server 2025 private preview sign-up form
• Currently supported SQL Server versions
compared
• SQL Server compatibility level overview
• Announcing SQL Server Management Studio
(SSMS) 21 Preview 1 and Copilot in SSMS
• Microsoft Previews Copilot AI in SQL Server
Management Studio

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About the Author
Hristo Hristov has been writing for
MSSQLTips.com since 2021, publishing more than
50 tips to date. He holds a masters degree in Data
Science and several Microsoft certifications
covering SQL, Power BI, and related technologies.
He is a data professional, AI developer, and
digitalization expert with a focus on improving
manufacturing processes.

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