We let a dice roll decide today's topic, and the winner ended up being: Computed Columns with PERSISTED and Indexed Expressions. We give our thoughts about it, best practices, pit falls, and tips.

Relevant links:

• SQL Server 2025 Preview RC1: Now Supporting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10 | Microsoft Community Hub
• Specify computed columns in a table - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn
• Indexes on computed columns - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn

Guy and Eitan discuss several interesting announcements and updates from Microsoft related to SQL Server and VS Code. And also Eitan talks about a weird issue he encountered involving page latch time-outs during DBCC CHECK command.

Please fill out the SQL Server on Linux adoption survey here! Thank you!

Relevant links:

• Higher log rate for business critical service tier in Azure SQL MI | Microsoft Community Hub
• What’s New in MSSQL Extension for VS Code v1.35
• Accelerating SQL Server 2025 momentum: Announcing the first release candidate - Microsoft SQL Server Blog
• Error 845 Time-out occurred while waiting for buffer latch type 4 during DBCC CHECK - Eitan Blumin's blog

Guy and Eitan discuss security-related best practice scripts, and several interesting AI topics.

Relevant links:

• microsoft-dbas-club/Security and Compliance/Check_Passwords_SQL_Server_Generated.sql
• microsoft-dbas-club/Security and Compliance/Best Practice Checks/Invalid_owner_for_system_schema_role_or_database.sql
• microsoft-dbas-club/Security and Compliance/Windows Group Members.sql
• Microsoft Introduced AI Integrations for SQL Server. - Brent Ozar Unlimited®
• What’s New in MSSQL Extension for VS Code v1.34
• AI coding platform goes rogue during code freeze and deletes entire company database
• EitanBlumin/sqlcmd-gui: a simple graphical user interface based on SQLCMD for executing parameterized TSQL scripts 

Guy and Eitan discuss Stephen Planck's blog post "Five SQL Server 2025 Enhancements DBAs Will Notice", and add some of their own insights.

Relevant links:

• Five SQL Server 2025 Enhancements DBAs Will Notice - SQL Table Talk
• Configure a flexible automatic failover policy for an availability group - SQL Server Always On | Microsoft Learn
• Accelerated Database Recovery (ADR) in TempDB | Microsoft Learn
• Enable and Run tempdb on tmpfs for SQL Server 2025 Preview on Linux - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn
• Optimized Locking - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn
• Standard Developer edition in SQL Server 2025 | Microsoft Learn
• ABORT_QUERY_EXECUTION query hint - public preview | Microsoft Community Hub

Many announcements and interesting releases came out this past month, so we got a lot to talk about in this episode!

Relevant links:

• What's New in SQL Server 2025 - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn
• SQL Server 2025 - AI ready enterprise database from ground to cloud | Microsoft Community Hub
• Announcing Public Preview of DiskANN in SQL Server 2025 | Microsoft Community Hub
• SQL Server 2025: introducing optimized Halloween protection | Microsoft Community Hub
• SQL Server 2025: introducing tempdb space resource governance | Microsoft Community Hub
• Unlocking the Power of Regex in SQL Server - Azure SQL Devs’ Corner
• Announcing the General Availability (GA) of JSON data type and JSON aggregates | Microsoft Community Hub
• Announcing the Public Preview of JSON index in SQL Server 2025 | Microsoft Community Hub
• ZSTD compression in SQL Server 2025 | Microsoft Community Hub
• MSSQL Extension for VS Code: GitHub Copilot Preview + UI GA
• MSSQL Extension for VS Code: Introducing Schema Compare (Preview) - Azure SQL Devs’ Corner
• SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 21 is now generally available (GA) | Microsoft Community Hub
• Copilot in SSMS preview
• Recently released: Updates to the SqlPackage and the DacFx ecosystem | Microsoft Community Hub
• Visual Studio 2022 Release Notes | Microsoft Learn
• Free SQL Managed Instance offer is now generally available
• Avoid T-SQL anti-patterns with the free T-SQL analysis tool - Azure SQL Devs’ Corner

Guy talks about a recent migration project he was working on to move an on-prem SQL Server to AWS RDS.

Eitan talks about a new AI-related feature in Azure SQL Databases.

And we also discuss the new SNAPSHOT backup T-SQL command in SQL Server 2022.

Relevant links:

• Importing and exporting SQL Server databases using native backup and restore - Amazon Relational Database Service
• Learn about Amazon RDS maintenance window | AWS re:Post
• LLM Structured Output from Azure SQL Explained - Azure SQL Devs’ Corner
• Create a Transact-SQL snapshot backup - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn

Guy and Eitan worry about the decline in SQL Server feature quality. But maybe there's something else behind it?

Relevant links:

• Improving Azure SQL Database reliability with accelerated database recovery in tempdb | Microsoft Community Hub
• What the Decline of Sql Server Quality means for Developers and DBAs
• SLA for SQL Database | Azure
• AI will eliminate DBA Jobs faster than you think

Guy and Eitan discuss a few interesting topics. Including a fun new game called "SQL Noir", how to implement statistical clustering model in SQL, about surrogate and natural keys, and the recently announced deprecation of Azure Data Studio.

Relevant links:

• SQL Noir - A Detective SQL Game
• How to Write a Recursive CTE in SQL Server | LearnSQL.com
• Azure Data Studio Retirement - Azure SQL Devs’ Corner
• Relational Databases - Surrogate Keys and Logical Duplicates (by Ami Levin)

Guy and Eitan answer an interesting question from the forum regarding the logic of NOT BETWEEN.

And also, checking out the SQL Squid Game, discussing SQL Audit, and sharing some tips for SSMS.

Relevant links:

• SQL Squid Game
• SQL Server Audit (Database Engine) - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn
• microsoft-dbas-club/Maintenance/SQLVersionUpdates

Tell us how you did and whether you survived the SQL Squid Game! 😉

Guy and Eitan talk about SQL Server 2025 (well, they try to, at least), and its various interesting upcoming features.

Relevant links:

• Announcing SQL Server 2025 – SQLServerCentral
• What's New in SQL Server 2025 - Brent Ozar Unlimited®
• Optimized Locking - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn
• SQLBits is Coming Back to London in June 2025! - Brent Ozar Unlimited®