Welcome to April! In the northeast United States that means spring, holidays and observances, spring break trips, and unpredictable weather. Not to worry, the engineering teams for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and GitHub Copilot in SSMS have continued to make steady progress, culminating in the release of SSMS 22.5 today.
We know that for some folks the cadence of releases is a significant change from SSMS 20 and earlier. We get it; it’s been an adjustment for us as well! But just as we have figured out this new rhythm and put new systems in place to make the process smoother, we’re confident you will as well. I truly believe that so much in life is about finding balance. We used to get a lot of feedback that we didn’t release SSMS updates often enough. Now we get comments that releases are too frequent. It’s hard to please everyone 😊 Please know that we truly value your feedback – I cannot tell you how often in meetings Makena or I will reference an item filed on the feedback site, or a set of comments. We appreciate all of you making the move to use the site – we’re over a year in and it’s been invaluable in helping shape our roadmap and identify what is a priority for all of you.
Ok, on to what’s new in SSMS 22.5...thanks for indulging me!
Migrations
With the retirement of Azure Data Studio, the migrations team has been enhancing the migration experience in SSMS. The 22.5 release introduces a new Migration Page which serves as a starting point for all things related to migrations. When you right-click on an instance and select Migrate SQL Server, the page opens and you can initiate an assessment, provision a target server, migrate your data, or monitor an in-progress migration. We want to make migrations easier; this consolidated page is a first step in that process.
New Migration page in SSMS 22.5
SQL Projects
Last month, in SSMS 22.4.1, SQL projects were made available in preview. If you missed Drew’s blog post, please take a few minutes to read it. I remember talking to Drew about bringing SQL projects to SSMS way back in 2022, when I started on the team. I cannot tell you how happy I am that it’s becoming a reality, and I cannot shine a bright enough light on Drew for his persistence and incredible work in this area. SQL projects represents the sum of a lot of moving parts, and Drew somehow keeps them all aligned and moving in the right direction.
Expect to see new capabilities related to SQL projects in subsequent releases. In addition to watching closely for feedback, the team is also keeping an open roadmap that you can follow. We know that the functionality has started simple, but engineering is working quickly to bring the full capabilities you expect into SSMS. In this release you can:
- import objects from an existing database into a SQL project
- use the new Advanced Publish settings dialog
- find new templates
- enjoy the updated SQL projects icon
Click-through new templates for SQL projects in SSMS 22.5
Connection dialog
The new connection dialog includes a Name field, for you to provide a customized name for a connection. This created some confusion for folks when they modified an existing connection to connect to a different server, but the Name stayed the same. In a previous release we added the Reset button in the bottom left, which clears out all fields. Not everyone is aware of the Reset capability, and in 22.5 we’ve changed the behavior to clear out the Name field if you modify the server name, the authentication type, the user name, or the database name fields.
Changes to Server Name, Authentication, User Name or Database Name clear out the Name field
This change should remove confusion about the server to which you’re connected.
GitHub Copilot in SSMS
On the GitHub Copilot in SSMS side, we’ve added support for interactions with the results pane, including the grid, messages, and execution plan. From the chat you can ask questions about the current results – and phrasing is important here. In the screenshot below I asked for the total UnitPrice for rows 42 through 53, and GitHub Copilot did the math for me. If I asked for "the total UnitPrice for all rows with an OrderDate of 2018-01-03", it would not have referenced the results; it would have run a query to sum UnitPrice for all rows in the database with an OrderDate of 2018-01-03.
GitHub Copilot in SSMS now supports interactions with the results pane, including the grid, messages, and execution plan.
I believe this capability is extremely useful when it comes to the execution plan - you don’t have to save it as a file or open it up in a new window to reference it – it’s a definite time saver. It can help with analyzing the output in the messages time – I’ve used it to compare STATISTICS IO and STATISTICS TIME output. However, asking AI to summarize your results is an interesting space. For large result sets, be aware that all of the results can be sent to the model.
I also need to call out a change on upgrade that may surprise a few folks. If you have a previous release of SSMS 22 and update to SSMS 22.5, you'll notice that Active Document is not selected by default, and it used to be. We will fix this in an upcoming release, but to have the active editor added as an active document by default, select the plus in the bottom of the chat and then Auto-attach active document. We do have this listed as a known issue.
Lastly, we want to make sure that GitHub Copilot users are aware of this blog post explaining upcoming changes regarding how your data is handled.
The quick summary: interaction data - specifically inputs, outputs, code snippets, and associated context - from Copilot Free, Pro, and Pro+ users will be used to train and improve AI models unless you opt out.
If you'd like to opt out, go to settings under “Privacy.” If you previously opted out of the setting allowing GitHub to collect this data for product improvements, your choice persists, and your data will not be used for training unless you opt in. This change does not affect Business and Enterprise users.
Summary
You can find the complete release notes here, and as always, thanks for reading and staying up to date with SSMS. I know we continually remind folks about the feedback site, but this month I’ll remind you about our documentation. If you find one of our docs to be confusing, incomplete, or simply missing, please let us know! I like writing documentation, even if a lot of folks don’t read it 😊
Microsoft