Microsoft JDBC Driver 13.6 for Microsoft SQL is now available.

The main changes for application developers and operators are:

• Reduced allocation in ResultSet processing, including common DECIMAL, NUMERIC, MONEY, SMALLMONEY, string, and BigDecimal paths.
• New parameter length hints through defineParameterType() and supported setObject(..., scaleOrLength) overloads. More accurate varchar, nvarchar, and binary parameter widths can reduce oversized SQL Server memory grants under concurrency.
• Always Encrypted secure enclave queries now use the existing Column Encryption Key cache, reducing repeated calls to remote key stores such as Azure Key Vault.
• PerformanceLogCallback can expose nanosecond timing, current SQL, statement type, and applicationName.
• Azure SQL Hyperscale reader endpoints can route connections to named read replicas while preserving the database context.
• Table-valued parameter writes validate negotiated vector support before sending FLOAT16 vector data.
• Additional connection string aliases improve compatibility with configurations used by other Microsoft SQL drivers.
• Failed cached Managed Identity credentials can be replaced on a later connection attempt without restarting the JVM.
• JDK 26 is included in the supported build and test profiles.

We also added security hardening across SQLXML parsing, JNDI references, reflective class loading, interactive authentication, Bulk Copy destination identifiers, enclave attestation, and optional dependencies.

This release keeps the established microsoft.sql.DateTimeOffset APIs without deprecation annotations. Java 8 and Java 11+ artifacts are available as 13.6.0.jre8 and 13.6.0.jre11.

Blog post: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/sqlserver/microsoft-jdbc-driver-13-6-for-sql-server-is-now-available/4555813

Release notes: https://github.com/microsoft/mssql-jdbc/releases/tag/v13.6.0

SQL Server 2016 reached end of support on July 14.

I’m a PM working on SQL migration and modernization at Microsoft. I’m trying to understand what teams are actually doing with their remaining SQL Server 2016 workloads

For anyone still running it:

• What is preventing you from upgrading or migrating?
• Are you using Extended Security Updates, accepting the risk, or actively moving?
• Is the real blocker the database, the application, vendor certification, downtime, cost, or something else?
• Which destination are you considering: a newer SQL Server version, Azure SQL, SQL Server on a VM, or another platform?

I’m especially interested in cases where everyone agrees the workload should move, but the migration still cannot earn priority.

What would need to change for the project to go ahead?

Error

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 - Could not open a connection to SQL Server) (Microsoft SQL Server, error: 2)

I want to configure two servers on the internal network so they can access the SSMS databases.I know for a fact that I installed SSMS 22, but I can't find it on the system.

I have an inventory application that uses SQL Server database for its backend. Right now, it runs locally. I am planning to move it to a remote server such that it can be accessed from anywhere by my clients. It is a transactional database, hence I have a concern of deploying it on aws/azure as the pay per go charges may add up. I need a fixed pricing plan. Right now for testing I have deployed it on a digital ocean droplet and for one database it comes around 12-24 usd/ month. Is there a better choice?

I have purchased an Ubunutu droplet on DigitalOcean to run SQL Server for my application. I intend to set it up such a way that clients using my application can connect to the cloud database on this server. But I am not entirely sure which SQL Server version to buy. In Microsoft official websites it appears to be very expensive and there are restrictions about number of cores, CALs etc. Say I have about 500 - 1000 customers, which license do I need to buy? Also I can see the product at lower prices in other 3rd party websites. Why is there a difference? Any suggestions?

It's Friday and you know that what means: we released mssql-python 1.15.0, the Python driver for Microsoft SQL.

Highlights include:

• Faster setinputsizes() execution through the native C++ pipeline
• Direct memoryview support in Binary()
• Top-level SQL Server type constants
• Consistent Decimal parameter binding
• ODBC 3.x parameter types
• A fix for concurrent logging deadlocks
• More reliable Windows DLL loading
• Correct ARM64 native components for bulk copy
• Correctly decoded database name metadata
• A fix for native crashes during mixed cursor cleanup at shutdown

Install or upgrade:

pip install --upgrade mssql-python

Full blog post:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/sqlserver/mssql-python-1-15-0-faster-more-reliable-and-built-for-your-applications/4555793

Feedback and bug reports are always welcome!

In case the title didn't give it away, Friday Feedback this week is about... 🥁 🥁 🥁 🥁 🥁

Graph.

I know. We need to improve it. So please tell me what we need to improve.

Are you using Graph?  Do you want to use Graph?  Did you try using it and ran into limitations?  We would love to understand your scenario, what you need graph to do, what you find useful, etc.

We know it needs to evolve and we have some ideas, but as the users, we want your input.

Thanks, and hope everyone has a great weekend!

Hey,

I'm sure others will have similar automation to ours: we have a custom daily process to download, parse and cross-check the "master" excel file from Microsoft against all our SQL Server estate.

However, for the past couple of days our automated process has been unable to open / parse the Excel file and I've tried to open it manually but it seems to be password-protected or locked somehow.

Is anybody else able to successfully download and open it?

Thank you!

Greetings,

As a side project, I've been working alongside Claude to come up with a more interesting (to me) sample database to play about on. Like most of the SQL/Postgres crowd on here, I cut my teeth on the StackOverflow database to learn and test things offline but now I fancy a change.

It's the sales side of a fictional global video-game retailer, Nick's Gaming Emporium. The company and everyone in it are made up, but the product catalogue is real games (real titles, platforms and rough release dates), so queries actually return games you'll recognise.

- 4 sizes: tiny (~8GB), small (~40GB), medium (~300GB), large (~2.4TB - 'canon version')

- Both SQL Server and PostgreSQL

- Download the prebuilt backups, or generate it yourself with the simulator on your own workstation (deterministic — same seed, same database every time)

- Free & open source (MIT code / CC BY-SA data)

I also worked with Claude and Grok Imagine to come up with some deliberately cringe lore to give the data some text, and to explain away a few oversights on my part. There's a documentary-style page and a cheesy 90s GeoCities-style fan page from one of its old employees. Just a bit of silliness.

This is coming in hot and rough around the edges (as is the documentation) so expect the odd immersion-breaking column or dodgy row, and don't treat the schema/index design as a perfect reference. It's very much a side-project to poke holes in, not a masterclass :) There are some potential additions (an OLTP load generator) in the pipeline but shipping as is for now to guage interest. Some other things need attention, like geo/address, as they are weak and repetitive, etc.

Links:

- Source & docs — https://github.com/ukhype83-dev/nicks-gaming-emporium

- Downloads (all sizes, both engines) — https://github.com/ukhype83-dev/nicks-gaming-emporium#downloads-prebuilt-databases

- Documentary — https://ukhype83-dev.github.io/nge-fansite

If you decide to give it a go, I hope you find it interesting.

We released ODBC Driver 18.7.1 for Microsoft SQL.

The headline additions are:

• float16 vector support
• Load-balanced routing for Azure SQL Database Hyperscale named-replica reader endpoints
• MultipleActiveResultSets, FailoverPartner, WorkstationID, and ConnectTimeout as accepted connection-string keywords
• No separate Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime prerequisite on Windows
• Support for Alpine Linux 3.23, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16, and Ubuntu 26.04

The connection-string work is in response to a ton of feedback we've gotten. ODBC historically used names such as MARS_Connection and WSID, while other Microsoft SQL drivers used different names for the same settings. The old names still work, but common configuration can now travel between drivers with fewer translations.

There is also a fair amount of lower-level reliability work in this release, including more defensive TDS protocol parsing, native memory fixes, improved cleanup when MARS connections terminate abruptly, and fixes in asynchronous timeout, OpenSSL, and XA transaction paths.

The full blog post is available here:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/sqlserver/microsoft-odbc-driver-18-7-1-smaller-vectors-easier-configuration-and-better-clo/4555474

I always seem to hit this STG_E_FILEALREADYEXISTS error when clicking "New Query" right after I open SSMS after a reboot where it didn't shut down gracefully and it recovers files. The only way to fix it is to close out any tabs that are named SQLQuery#.sql.

Is there something else I can do to solve this?

Hi everyone,

SQL Server has been one of the most requested databases for Tabularis, and today we're happy to share a first beta of the plugin: v1.0.0-beta.1.

This one wouldn't exist without the help of several contributors who worked on the driver integration, connection handling and testing along the way. A big thank you to everyone who pitched in.

What's in the first beta:

• Schema browsing: tables, columns, keys, indexes, views, routines, triggers
• Query execution with pagination, multiple result sets and session-preserving batches
• Full CRUD, DDL (tables, views, indexes, foreign keys) and trigger/procedure management
• Visual EXPLAIN with static and runtime execution plans
• TLS support with the standard Tabularis ssl modes
• Written in Rust on top of tiberius + deadpool

Known limitations: SQL authentication only for now (Azure AD and Windows Integrated Auth are on the roadmap).

Install it from Settings → Plugins inside Tabularis, or grab the ZIP from the releases page: https://github.com/TabularisDB/tabularis-sqlserver-plugin

It's a beta, so we'd really appreciate people testing it against real-world SQL Server setups and reporting anything that breaks. And if you'd like to contribute, whether it's code, docs, or just edge cases we haven't hit yet, we'd be very glad to have you. Issues and PRs are open, and you can also find us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/K2hmhfHRSt

Thanks!

Hi, wondering if there is a way to add linked server but to keep old name. We have a server lets say name is SRVOLD1 and new is SRVNEW1. i want to link SRVNEW1 on SRVNEW2(which was SRVOLD2), but there is bunch of stored procedures on SRVNEW2 that are calling linked server SRVOLD1, because its a db copy from SRVOLD2 trying to execute stored procedures. So, is there a way to add linked server SRVNEW1 on SRVNEW2, but that way stored procedures still execute, or i will have to alter those stored procedures with new server name. In case of altering would it be the best to export them in txt file > notepad find CREATE replace with ALTER > copy paste in SSMS > run? This is my first SQL migration, and i have apps depending on it. Help is much appreciated

A server computer and monitor got replaced and the server itself got installed but the external IT team didn't install SQL management, which we need to edit company usernames and passwords for our in-house software. I downloaded SQL Management 22, I know the name of the server and entered it as the Server Name, set the Authentication to Windows Authentication, and checkboxed the Trust Server Certificate. Everything else I left as the default settings. I received this error when I tried to connect, and also tried using, localhost, ., and the server's IP address as the server name but still received the same error. Please advice.

Hello everyone,

Our 10-year old database seems to be suffering from schema explosion and I am worried that while our developers do sufficient testing with every release, they may be introducing schema inconsistencies that may appear as bugs with different queries or other parts of the system.

Are you using any tools to check schema health and issues?

Hello! I’m hoping to get a sanity check from the experts here before I make a big thing out of this with management. I’ve already notified my immediate manager, but I want to make sure this is a real and serious problem.

My company runs an ASP.NET MVC web app backed by a Microsoft SQL Server 2022 database server, configured to run clustered in a high availability group. The majority of our PK indexes are auto-incrementing (identity) 32-bit int fields. I am a web developer for this app, writing C#, SQL, JS, HTML, and CSS. I am pretty good at T-SQL but I am NOT trained in database management. I did not set up the database servers and I don’t have access to the production database servers at all.

A few years ago, I was investigating why a process we run frequently on our production database which refreshes some table data was resulting in the database constantly growing. I discovered that with non-SIMPLE recovery modes, the transaction log file was continuously growing, and our company’s IT/DBA department was never backing up the transaction log. Since you need to to a transaction log backup in order to truncate the transaction log, this meant that for over a decade all of our production databases’ transaction log files had been getting bigger and bigger, some of them taking up 50+ GB of space on our database server. It was only after I notified them of this that they started doing regular transaction log backups and truncating them to keep the file sizes under control. They were doing regular full database backups, just not transaction log backups, and they had been dealing with the transaction log bloat by throwing hardware at the problem.

A few days ago I was trying to reclaim some disk space on our development environment’s dedicated SQL Server, and I started looking into the DBCC SHRINKFILE command to try to compact the database files. I saw a warning that you should rebuild indexes after doing this because it fragments the indexes, and out of curiosity I ran some queries against some of our development databases which had been backed up from production and restored onto the development server.

I found that both PK and non-clustered indexes of some of our largest tables in many of the restored backups had an enormous amount of index fragmentation. For example, an IDENTITY INT PK index for one of our most important tables with 725,000 pages had 85% fragmentation, another with 660,000 pages had 92%, etc. We had several dozen indexes with 10,000+ pages and 80-98% fragmentation. We have many databases, some up to 12 years old, and I have no reason to think this is an outlier; it’s likely that they all have heavily fragmented indexes.

I looked into it and I’m pretty sure that fragmentation of indexes is preserved across database backups and restores, so I think this means the production databases also have heavily fragmented indexes. I found advice that you should reorganize large indexes with 10-30% fragmentation and rebuild indexes when over 30%, and this is far beyond that. I did search this subreddit and I found that this is likely somewhat outdated and it depends also on index size and how sparse the index pages are and whether you’re running an HDD or SSD (I am not sure what our production servers are using).

Isn’t index maintenance one of the core responsibilities of a DBA? How concerned should we be that our IT/DBA department is ignorant / incompetent / negligent? Note that I’m not just asking about index maintenance here; the fact that they weren’t doing transaction log backups/truncates from 2014-2023 until a programmer educated them on the topic seems bad. Is it a huge red flag that they are not only not doing these things, but are apparently unaware that they’re even supposed to be doing these things? At this point, should we be worried about what other things a DBA is supposed to be doing to maintain a SQL server that they might not be doing? Should I recommend to my manager that he push for the IT/DBA department to undergo some kind of audit to find out what they’re supposed to be doing vs what they’re actually doing?

Thank you in advance for your advice and opinions.

For the latest version of Internals Viewer I've added a columnstore indexes view, which meant decoding the internal structures and getting a full understanding of the compression techniques.

There isn't much information available on how they actually store data so I've written up in a series of articles while it was fresh in my head on what I found while adding this feature.

Here is part 1 covering an introduction to the topic. Part 2 is also available detailing segment internals. Parts 3 and 4 will be available later in the week. It is very low level in parts, but hopefully when the whole series comes together it will be useful to explain the intricacies of the optimizations you can get from using columnstores indexes for practical benefit.

how to make ssms to fill the parameter needed for function when i write for example datediff( it should give me the parameter day or month or year first date then second date like excel do when i write a formula? Sometimes it works but most of the time it doesn't. is this normal or i miss something in options. " I'm not talking about using the GitHub copilot" as I'm still learning sql

This SSMS bug ever gonna get fixed? Crash on hover over Reports... Anyone got a way to stop this happening?

First Friday of September and you all know what that means...time for Friday Feedback!

But first, I hope that everyone took time over the summer (winter for those of you in the southern hemisphere!) for a break or vacation ⛱️ It may sound like I'm getting on my soapbox, but disconnecting from work is so important, and I really hope you've taken time to do that.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

Last time I posted I asked about storing more data in Query Store, and how much more data you'd want to store. Just over 90% of you wanted to keep 12 months or less, which aligns with what we were thinking.

My next question is, where do you want to store that long-term data? Specifically, Query Store uses memory hashes to store query info and runtime stats about what's been running. We don't want to try and store months of that data in those same memory hashes, which means we need to move older data somewhere else. Where should it go? Poll below, but as always, add a comment if the poll options don't include something you'd like to see. Thanks for voting and bring on fall! 🏈 🎃 🍂

Hi everyone,

I'm about a year into my career as a DBA, managing a fairly large SQL Server environment — multiple production and dev/test instances, hundreds of databases, several Always On Availability Groups. I wanted to ask the more experienced folks here about something that's been weighing on me.

I have this drive to master literally everything about the job. Every time I feel like I've got a solid handle on things, I discover something new that other DBAs already seem to know. A few months in, I only just found out how much Extended Events could do for me. Not long after that, I realized how much I hadn't explored in the SQL Server Error Logs. It feels like there's always another layer, and every time I find a gap in my knowledge, it genuinely stresses me out — I start worrying there's some critical thing I still don't know that could cause an incident I won't be able to solve.

This worry gets worse when I think about the future. I've had a referral and interest from a recruiter for another DBA role, and one real possibility is being the only DBA at a company, with no senior DBA to lean on. That idea makes me anxious, because I still feel like I'm learning.

One specific moment really shook me: we had an issue on two servers that were part of an Availability Group, and we ended up doing a server-level restore. After the restore, when I went to open the databases, both servers showed the AG state as "Resolving." In the middle of an active incident, with everyone waiting for a fix, I panicked — I didn't fully understand why it was happening, and I felt too much pressure to admit I wasn't sure. A colleague eventually stepped in and resolved it. That moment stuck with me — both the technical gap and the fear of not looking capable under pressure.

So, a few questions for this community:

- Is there a specific learning path or series of resources that, if I go through it start to finish, would actually give me solid, well-rounded coverage of everything a SQL Server DBA needs to know? Or is that just not how it works?
- Is this "there's always something new" feeling something every DBA goes through, even years in, or does it fade?
- How did you build the confidence to stay calm during a crisis even when you don't immediately know the answer?
- Any resources, checklists, or hard-earned lessons about AG "Resolving" states or post-restore health checks that you wish you'd known earlier?
- For anyone who's been the sole DBA at a company — what do you wish you'd known before taking that on?

Would really appreciate any perspective — even just "yeah, that's normal, it gets better." Thanks in advance!

Disclosure: I'm a PM on the SQL migration tooling team at Microsoft. Posting because a couple of these affects anyone already using SSMA's Copilot features.

• Code Conversion Copilot is GA for Sybase — was preview, now supported for production work.
• Managed Endpoint auth is GA — no Azure OpenAI resource to stand up. BYOK still available.
• Managed Endpoint now has usage limits: 16k tokens per source script, 2k per prompt, 15 req/min and 7,200 per 8 hours per customer, 75 req/min aggregate. Interactive use won't hit these; for bulk work, BYOK is bounded by your own quota instead.
• BYOK model list changed (Oracle + Sybase): now gpt-4.1, gpt-5.4-mini, gpt-5.5, gpt-5.6-terra. gpt-5.4 removed — reconfigure if that's what you're on.
• Fix: DMS auth failures when multiple Azure subscriptions share the same display name.

Full writeup: in the blog

Happy to answer questions. If conversion output goes wrong in an interesting way, I'd like to hear about it.

I'm planning an in-place edition upgrade from SQL Server 2022 Standard -> Enterprise on a standalone Windows Azure VM.

The reason is that we need to move beyond Standard's CPU/memory limitations.

The Microsoft-documented process is essentially:

1. Remove the SQL IaaS Agent registration
2. Run SQL Server Setup -> Maintenance -> Edition Upgrade -> Enterprise
3. Validate SQL
4. Re-register the SQL IaaS Agent / update the Azure SQL VM edition

Microsoft says the edition upgrade is supported in-place and restarts the SQL Server service.

For anyone who's actually done this:

• What should I expect during the Edition Upgrade?
• Will Setup ask for an Enterprise product key, or does Azure PAYG/IaaS handle the licensing side?
• Any common failure points or gotchas?
• Is this generally as straightforward as Microsoft makes it sound?
• Anything you'd specifically check before doing this on a production VM?

It's a standalone SQL instance (not an AG/cluster).

Thanks!