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®

Guy and Eitan go over the most popular sessions released from the SQL PASS archive of 2023, and discuss some other topics.

Relevant links:

• Announcing Microsoft SQL Server 2025: Enterprise AI-ready database from ground to cloud - Microsoft SQL Server Blog
• Sessions Archive for 2023 - PASS Data Community Summit
• Resolving and Preventing Deadlocks in SQL Server
• SSMS v21: Dark Mode, Git, Vertical Tabs, and More - Brent Ozar Unlimited®
• Copilot in SSMS is Kinda Like IE in SSMS - Brent Ozar Unlimited®

Guy and Eitan discuss the common challenge of long-running database integrity checks (DBCC CHECKDB) and a solution to resolve it, and why do we need integrity checks at all?

Relevant links:

• PASS Data Community Summit
• Incremental Integrity Check for Large Databases - Eitan Blumin's blog
• SQL Server Integrity Check - by Ola Hallengren
• tigertoolbox/MaintenanceSolution/5_job_Maintenance.sql · microsoft/tigertoolbox
• sp_can_tlog_be_applied (Transact-SQL) - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn
• T-SQL Script to Roll Forward Transaction Log Backups - Eitan Blumin's blog

Guy and Eitan discuss some interesting news from Microsoft regarding SQL Server, and also about the right way to handle index fragmentation.

Relevant links:

• Resources from Microsoft:
  • Preview release of SDK-style SQL projects in Visual Studio 2022 - Microsoft Community Hub
  • Native JSON support now in preview in Azure SQL Managed Instance - Microsoft Community Hub
  • EAP for Vector Support Refresh - Introducing Vector type - Azure SQL Devs’ Corner (microsoft.com)
  • Calling external REST endpoints from Azure SQL Database | Microsoft Learn
• Index fragmentation:
  • SQL Server Backup, Integrity Check, Index and Statistics Maintenance (hallengren.com)
  • Should we do index maintenance on an Azure SQL Managed Instance or Azure SQL Database? (kendralittle.com)
  • Stop Worrying About SQL Server Index Fragmentation (brentozar.com)
  • Why SQL Server Index Fragmentation Isn’t A Problem On Modern Storage Hardware – Darling Data (erikdarling.com)
• Index fragmentation scripts:
  • microsoft-dbas-club/Indexes/Table and Index High Unused Space.sql at MadeiraData/microsoft-dbas-club
  • Check Index Fragmentation Based on Page Fullness and Fill Factor
• Upcoming webinar at the Cloud Data Driven Meetup:
  • Database DevOps for Leaders - Eitan Blumin, Thu, Oct 24, 2024, 12:00 PM | Meetup

Fair warning for all listeners!

Before starting to listen to this podcast, very strongly recommended:

Have the diagram at the bottom of this page ready in front of you, so that it'll be easier for you to follow along:

• Common Causes and Troubleshooting Solutions for SQL AG Data Synchronization Latency - Microsoft Community Hub

(sorry in advance!)

Additional relevant links:

• Index cleanup : Harder than it looks - Simple Talk (red-gate.com)
• Find Overlapping Indexes.sql at chadbaldwin/SQL (github.com)