Today Data Exposed goes live at 9AM PT on LearnTV. Every 4 weeks, we’ll do a News Update. We’ll include product updates, videos, blogs, etc. as well as upcoming events and things to look out for. If you missed the episode, you can find them all at https://aka.ms/AzureSQLYT. This month we’ll recap all the updates and announcements in the database space since late September.
You can read this blog to get all the updates and references mentioned in the show. Here’s the November 2022 update.
By the way, this was a special episode, because it also was a session at the PASS Data Community Summit. If you missed the live stream, you won’t want to miss the recording: https://aka.ms/AzureSQLYT. Here are the awesome guests and topics we had on the show:
- Niko Neugebauer, Azure SQL Managed Instance
- Michael Howard, Security
- Kate Smith, Query Performance
- Bob Ward, SQL Server 2022
- Muazma Zahid, Azure SQL Database
- Carlos Robles, Migrations
- Dinakar Nethi and Dhananjay Mahajan, Azure Arc and Hybrid
- Patrick LeBlanc and Adam Saxton, Power BI
- Erin Stellato, SQL Experiences and Tools
- Michael Howard, Security
Product updates @ PASS Data Community Summit
Lots of updates to cover! Let’s start with the announcements for Azure SQL and SQL Server that have happened at PASS so far. Of course, the most anticipated announcement has been the general availability (GA) release of SQL Server 2022! Bob Ward came on the show to tell us about this moment and the things he’s most excited about. We also released the GA version of Azure Data Studio 1.40. A lot landed in Azure Data Studio 1.40, including Table Designer GA and Query Plan Viewer GA, but you should check out the release blogs to learn all about the updates!
These next updates are hot off the press! Azure Synapse Link for SQL went GA, and we announced External REST endpoints integration in public preview. For Azure SQL Database, we announced restore progress as GA, and Hyperscale Import-Export Private Link as GA. Azure SQL Managed Instance announced cross-subscription PITR, Log Replay Service, Transactional replication, and Backup portability with SQL Server 2022 as GA. The SQL Managed Instance team also announced a TON of features in public preview: zone redundancy for Business Critical, fast instance create, start/stop, MS DTC support, license-free GeoDR, backup transparency, and cross instance database move. Niko Neugebauer came on the show to tell us all about the updates.
Product updates
Yes, we announced a lot at PASS, but we’ve also released a lot between our last news update and PASS, which we don’t want you to miss.
On the Azure SQL side, quite a few things went GA which I think you’ll be excited about. The first, across both DB and MI is Query Store hints. Query Store hints provide an easy-to-use method for shaping query plans and behavior without changing application code. This is great when you need to go beyond the Query Optimizer and optimize queries manually for specific conditions. Learn more about Query Store hints (also in SQL Server 2022).
Drilling into GA updates for Azure SQL Managed Instance, the team released zone redundant storage (ZRS) for backups, memory optimized premium series hardware and 16TB storage in Business Critical, and new TempDB configurations that increase performance. The MI team is always listening to what you all say you need, so it’s no surprise to see all these great updates! The TempDB updates allow you to configure the number of TempDB files and their growth increments, and they are persisted upon things like server restart, failover, or scaling.
Looking at GA for Azure SQL Database, the Hyperscale team has lots of things to share. Hyperscale released ZRS for backups, in addition to import and export operations (previously only available in other Azure SQL Database tiers), and reverse migration to the general purpose tier. The last one is huge, because prior to this release, moving from a general purpose database to a Hyperscale database was a one-way street. The reason is that we re-architected Hyperscale to be a limitless cloud-native database, with a very different architecture. With this recent announcement, customers can move to Hyperscale knowing that, if for whatever reason, they want to go back to general purpose, they can. I am anticipating a lot more folks will be checking out Hyperscale! Let me know what you think. The final GA announcement for Azure SQL Database was higher limits (up to 80 vCores in select regions) for Azure SQL Database serverless, giving you even more flexibility in auto-scaling to meet demand.
OK let’s switch gears and recap the latest public preview features across Azure SQL. Last week, we announced preview support for the Azure SQL trigger for Azure Functions and Java and PowerShell support for Azure SQL bindings for Azure Functions. With the new trigger, customers with nearly any SQL database can enable change tracking and develop event-driven applications on Azure Functions. In the public preview for Azure SQL bindings for Azure Functions, many enterprises have started working with C#, JavaScript, and Python, but we are expanding to include much-requested support for Java and PowerShell.
Moving on to the momentum with Hyperscale, we’re closing the final gaps between Hyperscale and the other service tiers by introducing long-term backup retention (LTR) for Hyperscale. Across Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance, we have two interesting new capabilities related to approximate percentile and table constraints. Approximate query processing was introduced to enable operations across large data sets where responsiveness is more critical than absolute precision (like telemetry dashboards, anomaly detection). The new native implementation for the APPPROX_PERCENTILE function will calculate the approximated value at a provided percentile from a distribution of numeric values. The second update is new T-SQL for resumable add table constraints, where the resumable operations allow index operations to be executed while the table is online (ONLINE=ON) and several other things (e.g., pause and restart an index create or rebuild, recover from index create/rebuild failures, enable truncation of transaction logs during index create/rebuild).
Some of you may already be familiar with the Database Migration Assessment for Oracle extension in Azure Data Studio, which helps you easily assess and migrate to Azure SQL. We recently expanded it (in preview) to also help you if your migration target is Azure Database for PostgreSQL.
Other database updates
Starting in 2022 we’re trying to keep you updated on what’s going on with other database services at Microsoft, as we understand that oftentimes you’re using more than one service. Here are the updates I gathered from October and November 2022 so far.
Videos
We continued to release new and exciting episodes this month. Here is the list, or you can just see the playlist we created with all the episodes!
- Sergey Khimchenko: Insider Series: Architect your Azure Data Estate with Well-Architected Framework
- Erin Stellato: How to Analyze Query Plans in Azure Data Studio
- [MVP Edition] Karen Lopez: Build Confidence in Your Data with Ledger Databases and Tables
- Lior Kamrat: Announcing Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance Landing Zone Accelerator
- [SQL Insider Series] Laura Grob: How and Why to Virtualize your Data in Azure SQL Managed Instance
- Drew Skwiers-Koballa: Develop Apps with Azure SQL Database for Free
- Sravani Saluru: How to use Windows Auth with Azure SQL Managed Instance
- [MVP Edition] John Miner: Full Text Indexing Basics with Azure SQL
- Annabel Bradford, Bob Ward: SQL Server 2022 @ PASS Data Community Summit
We’ve also had some great Data Exposed Live sessions this year. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see them all and get notified when we stream. Here are some of the recent live streams.
- Azure SQL News Update: August, live from Microsoft Studios
- May the 4th be with Azure SQL (News Updates): this was a Star Wars-themed episode and it was so fun! Check it out for costumes, themed demos and slides, and fun!
- Azure SQL & SQL Server 2022: Intelligent Database Futures
- Azure SQL News Update: 2021 Year in Review
- Welcome to SQL Server 2022 Live!
Blogs
As always, our team is busy writing blogs to share with you all. Blogs contain announcements, tips and tricks, deep dives, and more. Here’s the list I have of SQL-related topics you might want to check out.
- Azure Blog, data-related
- Build a globally resilient architecture with Azure Load Balancer, Mahip Deora
- Sharing the latest improvements to efficiency in Microsoft’s datacenters, Noelle Walsh
- Microsoft named a Leader in 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Services, Kathleen Mitford
- Accenture and Microsoft drive digital transformation with OnePlatform on Microsoft Energy Data Services for OSDU™, Kadri Umay
- Forrester Total Economic Impact study: Azure Arc delivers 206 percent ROI over 3 years, Omar Khan
- Azure Scales 530B Parameter GPT-3 Model with NVIDIA NeMo Megatron, Rachel Pruitt
- Leverage SFTP support for Azure Blob Storage to build a unified data lake, Yash Lunagaria
- Microsoft SQL Server Blog
- PASS Data Community Summit 2022 keynote: Transform your data estate with Microsoft’s Intelligent Data Platform
- Memory Grant Feedback: Persistence and Percentile Grant
- Intelligent Query Processing: degree of parallelism feedback
- Data Virtualization with PolyBase for SQL Server 2022
- Backup and restore to URL for S3-compatible object storage
- Azure Synapse Link for SQL
- SQL Server Tech Community
- Released: Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 5.1 Preview 2
- Optimum performance for your data with SQL Server 2022
- Azure Data Studio and BDC Retirement
- Take the SQL Server Mac challenge
- Early technical preview of JDBC Driver 12.1.0 for SQL Server released
- Update: ODBC Driver 18.1.2 for SQL Server Released
- OLE DB Driver 19.2 for SQL Server Released
- Released: Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 5.1 Preview 1
- Released: Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 5.0.1
- Modernize your data estate on SQL from cloud to edge
- SQL Server 2022 Release Candidate 1 is now available on Linux
- HADR_SYNC_COMMIT Wait Updates (In Progress)
- SQL Server 2022 Release Candidate 1 is now available
- Cumulative Update #18 for SQL Server 2019 RTM
- dbcc dumptrigger: Capture a dump for specific error and state
- Microsoft SQL Server on Ubuntu pro-The preferred choice for deploying SQL Server on Ubuntu in Azure!
- Revamped SQL Permission system for Principle of Least Privilege and external policies – internals
- Ledger - Automatic digest upload for SQL Server without Azure connectivity
- Cumulative Update #31 for SQL Server 2017 RTM
- Azure SQL Tech Community
- Join Azure SQL Managed Instance Product Group at PASS Data Community Summit 2022
- Connection Security Improvements in SqlPackage 161
- Announcing public preview of the Azure SQL trigger for Azure Functions
- Join Microsoft at PASS Data Community Summit 2022
- Azure Data Community Newsletter Sept/Oct 2022
- Announcing Preview of Approximate Percentile Functions for Azure SQL DB and Azure SQL MI
- Import Export Service is now Generally Available on Azure SQL Hyperscale Database
- Introducing Geo-Zone Redundant Storage (GZRS) for Azure SQL Managed Instance backups
- Migrate your sensitive data to SQL Server on Azure confidential VMs
- Recently Released: Updates to SqlPackage, DacFx, and GitHub sql-action
- Improve your SQL Managed Instance performance with new TempDB configurations
- General Availability of mem. opt. premium-series HW and 16 TB storage in BC in SQL Managed Instance
- Long-term backup retention(LTR) on Azure SQL Hyperscale service tier is now in preview
- Read-access geo-zone redundant storage (RA-GZRS) now available for Azure SQL Hyperscale databases
- Revamped SQL Permission system for Principle of Least Privilege and external policies – internals
- How to take secure, on-demand backups on SQL Managed Instance
- How to check if global virtual network peering is supported on the virtual cluster for SQL MI
- Generally available: Ability to Reverse Migrate SQL database from Hyperscale to General Purpose tier
- Azure SQL Dev’s Corner
- Azure Database Support (SQL-related posts)
- Root certificates of Azure SQL DB and SQL Managed Instance
- Lesson Learned #245: Azure SQL Database - Lessons Learned from the Trenches in PASS Summit 2019
- How monitor PITR restore in Managed Instance
- The-connection-is-broken-and-recovery-is-not-possible-()-and-other-errors-4891-1326-2250-13800-21036
- Lesson Learned #244: No such host is known connecting to Azure SQL Managed Instance Private Endpoint
- Lesson Learned #243: Enabling ODBC connection pooling in PHP
- SSMS Performance Dashboard for Managed Instance shows different percent of CPU usage
- Restore or create a database with tags
- Lesson Learned #242: The server principal "xyz" is not able to access the database "Yzxxx"
- Can we access Change Data Capture and Change Tracking on readable replica?
- Lesson Learned #241: Lessons Learned from the Azure Database Support Blog Series with Anna Hoffman
- TDE High availability with customer-managed key for Azure SQL Databases
- Lesson Learned #240: Checking connection and execution latency in Azure SQL DB and Managed Instance
- Tales From the Field channel
- Tips & Tricks #4: Monitoring Backup History for Azure SQL Database & Azure SQL Managed Instance
- Lesson Learned #239: Attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden by its access permission
- How to use Sqlpackage with Managed Identity
- Azure SQL idle sessions are killed after about 30 minutes
- Deleted Azure SQL Database with existing diagnostic settings
- Could not connect to mail server. (No such host is known)
- Azure SQL and Azure SQL Managed Instance - Backup retention polices Loading ...
- Lesson Learned #238: Configuring Private Endpoint Connections in Azure SQL Managed Instance
- Tips & Tricks #3: Unable to set AAD Admin for Azure SQL Managed Instance
- Invoke-Sqlcmd with Azure Automation for Azure SQL database
- Auto scale up/down the Managed instance
- Error “SameKeyMaterialNotFoundOnRemoteServer” while coping Azure SQL DB to a different server
Data Exposed
On Data Exposed, we’re always explaining topics, demonstrating features, discussing the latest news, etc. related to Azure Data through live and on-demand episodes. Check out any of the series available now – and note we’re always adding new topics and episodes:
Azure SQL Security: http://aka.ms/dataexposed-security
Azure SQL Virtual Machines: https://aka.ms/azuresqlvmyt
Migrating to SQL: https://aka.ms/migrating-to-sql
SQL Server 2022: https://aka.ms/dataexposed-sqlserver2022
SQL Insiders: https://aka.ms/sqlinsiderseries
Plus find new, on-demand Data Exposed episodes released every Thursday at https://aka.ms/dataexposedyt
Microsoft Learn module of the month
This month, we had a big announcement for SQL Server 2022! I thought you might want the opportunity to get hands on (for free), so this month I am highlighting the brand-new module Introduction to SQL Server 2022 (https://aka.ms/learnsqlserver2022). This module, written by Bob Ward, takes you through all the new scenarios (including some awesome hands-on exercises). I can’t think of a better way to get started with SQL Server 2022 than this module. Check it out and let us know what you think.
Anna’s pick of the month!
OK this was my pick of the month last month but there were way too many awesome things for me to pick, so I’m just doubling down on videos with my dog (#sorrynotsorry). The goal is to share database tips in a short, consumable fashion while I walk my dog. Check it out, follow along, and let me know what you think! It’s running on TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@analyticanna), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/analytic.anna/reels/), and Twitter (https://twitter.com/AnalyticAnna).
Until next time…
That’s it for now! Be sure to check back next month for the latest updates. Next month is special as we’ll do our 2022 Year in Review. We also release new episodes on Thursdays at 9AM PT and new #MVPTuesday episodes on the last Tuesday of every month at 9AM PT at aka.ms/DataExposedyt.
Having trouble keeping up? Be sure to follow us on twitter to get the latest updates on everything, @AzureSQL.
We hope to see you next time, on Data Exposed 🙂
--Anna and Marisa
Updated Nov 15, 2022
Version 1.0
Anna Hoffman
Microsoft
Microsoft
