Lesson Learned #28: Why does SQL SERVER Management Studio report that my Azure SQL Database version is 12?

First published on MSDN on Aug 07, 2017
Very often, our customers are asking about why does SQL Server Management Studio report that my Azure SQL Database versions is 12? Does it mean that I'm using SQL SERVER 2014? Why does it mean that is not updated?

The explaination is that if your application check the version of SQL using select @@version the information reported will be wrong, because, right now, to identify the version of Azure SQL Database, we use the combination of edition and ProjectMayorVersion ( select SERVERPROPERTY('edition'), select SERVERPROPERTY('ProductMajorVersion').

Edition corresponds to SQL Azure and ProductMayorVersion corresponds with 12. 12 represents the V12 of SQL Azure but not with version 12 that corresponds in OnPremise or IaaS as you could find out in this URL

So, if you are using a any security check application, please, review with this 3rd party vendor of this tool if the module that check the SQL Server version is aware about this in order to prevent any false positive.