As your dedicated Microsoft Solution partner, we keep up with Microsoft updates and industry announcements to ensure you are always well informed and prepared for future technology investments. Microsoft's dedication to innovation is showcased yet again with the Public Preview of SQL Server 2025. The trial is now available to be downloaded and experienced here.
The continued adoption and implementation of AI solutions has been presenting new challenges for Microsoft customers’ applications and data. Microsoft has seen that organizations want to deploy AI workloads across a hybrid environment of cloud, edge, and dedicated infrastructure, with privacy and security being more at the forefront than ever. Microsoft SQL Server 2025 is an enterprise AI-ready database from ground to cloud that tackles these challenges by bringing AI to customer data. This release maintains SQL Server’s three-decade streak of innovation in performance and security, adding new AI capabilities. With Microsoft Fabric integration, users can bring their data into the next generation of data analytics. The 2025 release supports hybrid environments across clouds, on-premises datacenters, and edge, leveraging Microsoft Azure innovation for customers databases.
Major areas of Innovation in SQL Server 2025 from a 10,000-foot view look a little like this:
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Built-in AI to combine vector and key word search in a single engine. Users have the flexibility of connecting with AI models of their choice using the familiar T-SQL language.
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Empowers Modern Apps Development by providing the necessary tools for developers to build AI apps consistently across cloud and on-premises, including native JSON support, REST APIs and more.
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Enhances Security and Performance with Microsoft Entra Managed Service Identity for authentication, Optimized Locking for improved concurrency, and faster query processing for better performance.
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Enables Frictionless Analytics and Cloud Agility by offering real-time data replication with Fabric database mirroring, centralized management, governance, and automation using Azure Arc.
AI in its DNA
SQL Server 2025 has AI built-in, simplifying AI application development and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) patterns with secure, performant, and easy-to-use vector support, leveraging familiar T-SQL syntax. With this new capability, users can combine vectors with their SQL data for a hybrid AI vector search.
SQL Server 2025 is the AI-ready enterprise database. AI capabilities are built right into the database and are available in a way that is both scalable and secure. This SQL release is built specifically for developers, with Microsoft touting, “some of the biggest innovations we have provided in a decade.” Microsoft has built SQL Server 2025 with innovations in security, performance, and availability, and you can now connect to Azure with Arc or replicate your data with Fabric data mirroring.
Build AI Applications
SQL Server 2025 is a powerful, enterprise-ready vector database that seamlessly integrates enterprise AI with built-in security and compliance. It features a native vector store and index powered by DiskANN, enabling efficient semantic searches across large datasets through disk-based retrieval and chunking. The engine supports flexible AI model management via REST interfaces, allowing models to run from ground to cloud. For developers building AI applications—whether preprocessing data, training models, or using RAG patterns—low-code, extensible tools offer dynamic model interfaces directly within SQL, backed by T-SQL and REST endpoints, and integrate smoothly with popular frameworks like LangChain, Semantic Kernel, and Entity Framework Core.
Boost Developer Productivity
When constructing data-intensive applications such as with AI applications, it is critical to focus on extensibility, frameworks, and data enrichment to enhance developers’ productivity. Microsoft ensures SQL 2025 will provide a best-in-class experience for developers by incorporating features such as REST API support, GraphQL integration through Data API Builder, and Regular Expression enablement. Native JSON support also enables developers to more effectively deal with frequently changing schema and hierarchical data, allowing for the creation of more dynamic applications. Overall, SQL development has been enhanced to be more extensible, performant, and user-friendly. All functionalities are supported by the foundation of security provided by the SQL Server engine, reinforcing it as a truly enterprise-ready platform for AI.
Best-in-class Security and Performance
SQL Server 2025 sets the benchmark for database security, performance, and reliability—introducing support for Microsoft Entra managed identities and outbound authentication via Azure Arc, improving credential management, compliance, and auditability. Built on the battle-tested foundation of Azure SQL, this version delivers enhanced query optimization, OPPO for runtime-based plan selection, and persisted statistics on replicas for consistent performance. Analytical workloads benefit from improved batch processing and columnstore indexing, while new locking mechanisms like TID Locking and LAQ minimize resource contention and maximize concurrency. Plus, real-time change event streaming enables seamless data integration into platforms like Azure Event Hubs and Kafka, empowering modern applications with incremental, event-driven intelligence.
Microsoft Fabric and Azure Arc
Traditional data integration methods in data warehouses and data lakes rely on complex ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes that lack real-time capabilities, limiting timely analytics. These traditional data integration methods do not support real-time data transfer, which results in latency that prevents the creation of accurate, real-time analytics. Microsoft Fabric’s robust capabilities include comprehensive, integrated, and AI-enhanced data analytics services built to meet the requirements of modern analytical workloads. Microsoft Fabric addresses this with a unified, AI-enhanced analytics platform, featuring Mirrored SQL Server Database—a fully managed, near real-time data replication solution that simplifies syncing SQL Server data from Azure or on-premises environments to OneLake for immediate insights. SQL Server 2025, integrated with Azure Arc, enhances manageability and governance across hybrid environments with features like automatic patching, backups, monitoring, and flexible pay-as-you-go licensing, adding flexibility and licensing visibility.
Getting Started
It is important to keep in mind the public preview is just that – a preview to showcase new features and prepare users for the up-and-coming experience. Once SQL 2025 is released later this year and moves to general availability, the free public preview cannot be converted to a paid instance. Microsoft has not yet announced an official release date, and SQL Server 2025 is expected to fully release with all these exciting new and upcoming AI capabilities in Q3 or Q4 of 2025. As your Microsoft Partner holding all 6 Microsoft Solution designations, we are ready to be your trusted advisor and provider when it’s time to license and upgrade or migrate to SQL Server 2025. Ready to start planning ahead? Reach out to one of our licensing experts today; we will help you prepare for SQL Server 2025.
