mssql-django 1.7.1: Microsoft Fabric Support and Migration Fixes

We just shipped mssql-django 1.7.1 with two fixes that matter if you're running Django on Microsoft Fabric or using descending indexes in your migrations.

JSONField Now Works on Microsoft Fabric

SQL Database in Microsoft Fabric reports itself as EngineEdition 12, which our backend didn't previously recognize. The result: JSONField queries, hash functions, collation introspection, and test teardown all broke on Fabric because the backend couldn't correctly identify the server capabilities.

In 1.7.1, we added full detection for Fabric's engine edition. The backend now correctly treats Fabric as an Azure SQL-class database, which means JSONField, MD5, SHA1, SHA224, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512, and collation-dependent lookups all work as expected. We also combined the ProductVersion and EngineEdition queries into a single round trip, so connection setup is faster too.

If you've been waiting to use Django with SQL Database in Microsoft Fabric, this is the release that makes it work.

Descending Index Migrations No Longer Crash

If you had a model with a descending index and ran an AlterField migration on one of the indexed columns, Django would crash with FieldDoesNotExist. The issue was in how our schema editor looked up fields during index reconstruction: it was reading index.fields (which only contains field names for simple indexes) instead of index.fields_orders (which correctly handles the (field_name, order) tuples that descending indexes use).

This was a one-line fix, but it blocked anyone whose migrations touched fields covered by descending indexes. If you've been working around this, upgrade and your migrations will run cleanly.

SQL Server 2025 in CI

We upgraded our Windows CI pipeline to run against SQL Server 2025, so every commit is now tested against the latest version. Combined with our existing coverage across SQL Server 2016-2022, Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and now Microsoft Fabric, you can be confident the backend works across the full Microsoft data platform.

Upgrade

pip install --upgrade mssql-django

Full compatibility:

Questions, bugs, or contributions? Find us on GitHub.

mssql-django is open source under the BSD license. Built and maintained by Microsoft.