Announcing the release of SSMS 21 Preview 5

Happy almost-Spring (for any Southern Hemisphere dwellers: happy almost-Fall)! We are excited to announce the latest preview of SSMS 21: Preview 5. If you already have SSMS 21 Preview installed, you should receive a notification that an update is ready to install. Or, you can go to Help > Check for Updates within SSMS. This will launch the Visual Studio Installer, check for an update, and Preview 5 should appear there. 

Navigating to Help > Check for Updates should bring up the Visual Studio Installer with the Preview 5 update available to install.

Preview 5 is chock-full of awesome updates. Some highlights from our release notes include:

• Reinstating Analysis Services and Reporting Services as Business Intelligence components in the Visual Studio Installer.
• Adding support for Azure SQL Database cutover commands MANUAL_CUTOVER and PERFORM_CUTOVER to help you move to Hyperscale with ease.
• Adding a Close Idle SQL Connections command to the Help menu to help manage overhead associated with opening and closing connections.

Now when installing SSMS 21 Preview, you have the option to install SQL Server Analysis Services and SQL Server Reporting Services as Individual components!

We also added a new command line option, -A, to specify authentication method when connecting from the command line (you can read more about accepted values here), introduced IntelliSense and scripting support for Vector functions, and we continued to expand our Dark Theme coverage. Bugs addressed in Preview 5 include some accessibility issues, customer-reported issues, and a fix for how Vector data type columns are displayed in Object Explorer.

As always, keep sending us suggestions and reporting bugs you see on our feedback site. We check what’s been added to the site on a regular basis and it’s one of the primary ways we stay connected to the wants and needs of the community. We are still working on migrating the Ideas from our old site to our new site to retain the years of feedback and suggestions that have been posted.

Looking ahead, we are excited about the updates to come in future previews, all building towards the GA of SSMS 21. We’ve had some questions about extension support for SSMS 21, and we will have answers soon – stay tuned!

Please enjoy the latest Preview of SSMS 21 and let us know what you think of it!