{"id":51562,"date":"2025-12-05T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/sql-server\/blog\/?p=51562"},"modified":"2026-03-19T16:20:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T23:20:43","slug":"how-the-microsoft-sql-team-is-investing-in-sql-tools-and-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/sql-server\/blog\/2025\/12\/05\/how-the-microsoft-sql-team-is-investing-in-sql-tools-and-experiences\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Microsoft SQL team is investing in SQL tools and experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have the privilege, honor, and pleasure of being part of the SQL tools and experiences team at Microsoft, and this team is full of product leaders and engineers that care about you and your productivity. This team focuses on building the tools, SDKs, and experiences that matter most\u2014so you can get the greatest value from Microsoft SQL Server<\/a>, Azure SQL<\/a>, SQL database in Fabric<\/a> and Fabric Data Warehouse<\/a>. You, the community, and the customers, are our top priority. We\u2019d like to take a moment to explain where we are currently investing to meet your needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enhancing your SQL workflow<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

From a tooling perspective, we are investing heavily in SQL Server Management Studio<\/a> (SSMS) and the MSSQL extension for Visual Studio Code. SSMS is where we primarily aim to serve data professionals like you including database administrators, data analysts, database developers, data scientists, and data engineers, and we have been doing so for two decades now. The MSSQL extension for Visual Studio Code is where we primarily aim to serve application developers. Additionally, from a web interface perspective, we are investing in the Microsoft Azure<\/a> portal and Microsoft Fabric<\/a> web experiences to support Azure and Fabric cross-functional roles and tasks to be done. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the past year, we\u2019ve modernized SSMS<\/a>\u2014now based on the latest release of Visual Studio\u2014and brought in numerous customer requests including dark mode, Arm64 support, Fabric support, GitHub Copilot, and more. We also brought rich, AI-assisted experiences to Visual Studio Code<\/a> with GitHub Copilot Ask and Agent mode support, in addition to many new and improved capabilities in areas around designing schemas and tables, provisioning and getting connected (including Fabric and local containers), query results, and more. In the web, we launched a unified Azure SQL experience<\/a> in the Azure portal, and shipped SQL database in Fabric<\/a>, now generally available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building the future of SQL development<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In addition to delivering quality releases and consistent functionality across these tools and experiences that enable you to efficiently manage and develop with Microsoft SQL Server, we are aiming higher for the future. Our vision is to equip every database with source control and CI\/CD integration, streamline trusted and reliable deployments, provide consistent and tailored Copilot experiences, and deliver modern drivers, SDKs, and CLIs as well as a robust data API and MCP Server. We\u2019re also investing in rich experiences that help developers take full advantage of AI capabilities in the SQL engine, making it easier to build and optimize AI-ready applications. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delivering on that vision requires focus and critical prioritization, a responsibility that we\u2019re taking with deep consideration and increased transparency to you. Full roadmap details across our tools and experiences can be found at the end of this article.\u00a0If you were using Azure Data Studio<\/a> or SDK-style SQL projects in Visual Studio 2022 and are impacted by the retirement of these tools, you can still use the original SQL projects in Visual Studio 2026<\/a> so that your established solutions can upgrade to the latest Visual Studio version without compatibility conflicts. SDK-style (Microsoft.Build.Sql) projects are generally available in Visual Studio Code with the SQL Database Projects extension and are directly integrated with SQL database in Fabric source control. In the first half of 2026 SDK-style SQL projects will be added to SQL Server Management Studio<\/a>, empowering more database professionals with foundational tools for database DevOps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See what’s next and join the conversation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We know that you will have feedback for us, now and as we go forward, and we want to thank you in advance for that, as it is critical that we understand what you need from your SQL tooling. This benefits you, us, and the entire community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n