The Microsoft SQL Year in Review

Recently, I watched a year in review from Data Exposed, which looked at what's changed in SQL Server, Azure SQL, and SQL Database in Fabric. This was a lengthy version of the show, just over an hour, though there is a blog to read if you prefer that format. Both look back at the year and what's changed in the platforms. I'd forgotten about the One SQL aim for Microsoft to allow code to run on-premises, in the cloud, and across the relational and analytical platforms. It's a good goal, and one I like. That last thing any of us wants to worry about is subtle language changes from one platform to another.

Bob Ward was a guest early in the show, talking about the new version, SQL Server 2025, and his experiences at Ignite. He noted that while there were many new features that were built, the most exciting things for customers were the changes in the Standard and Express editions. If you haven't been paying attention, the capacity limits are raised in SQL Server 2025, something many of us have wanted for years. The Standard Edition can now use 32 cores and 256GB of RAM. That's a welcome doubling of memory and a 50% in cores from SQL Server 2022. Express compute limits are the same, but the database size can grow to 50GB, a welcome increase from the 10GB that has been the limit for years.

And no price increase, which is helpful when you might be feeling a budget crunch.

There are quite a few things that have happened in the Data Platform space. When I look at the long list, I see quite a few things I didn't know about or had forgotten. These aren't Fabric-specific features, but those that are a part of the SQL space. There are too many things to list, but if you work across Azure SQL and SQL Server, you might take a look to see if there are enhancements that could be useful in your environment.

During much of the last two years, I have felt Microsoft is completely focused on Fabric and not investing elsewhere, but looking at the review, I see that's not the case. Fabric seems to gather most of the attention from both engineering and marketing, but there are still lots of investments being made in the SQL platform.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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