SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 21 is now generally available (GA)
The SQL Tools team is thrilled to announce the general availability of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 21. SSMS 21 GA brings a modern installation and update experience through the Visual Studio installer, 64-bit support, Git integration, and initial dark theme support.Announcing the release of SQL Server Management Studio 21 Preview 1
The SQL Tools team, in partnership with Visual Studio team, is thrilled to announce the release of SQL Server Management Studio 21 Preview 1, which is based on Visual Studio 2022 (17.13.0 Preview 1). I often state, “It takes a village,” and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 21 is no exception. We initiated work for this release after making SSMS 20.0 available in March. The teams committed significant time and energy to bring SSMS 21 Preview 1 to completion and land a November release. We have rebuilt SSMS from the ground up and are excited to bring it into a modern state and address many long-standing customer requests; we've linked the feedback items below for those interested. Download SSMS 21 Preview 1 What's new As a result of SSMS 21 becoming a Visual Studio-based solution, SSMS now supports 64-bit, is available via a modern installer, and offers automatic updates. You can read more about the mechanics of the Visual Studio installer in the documentation. Thanks to the Visual Studio team, we will offer two channels for SSMS 21: Preview and Release. The Preview channel is currently the only available channel. Once SSMS 21 is Generally Available (GA), it will be available through the Release channel, and we will use the Preview channel to share early builds of future releases for those of you who like to stay on the cutting edge. A review of the release notes may suggest there isn’t a whole lot that’s new in SSMS 21, which is misleading. Two features that users have been asking to see for a very long time are now available: Git integration and dark theme. Git integration has always been an integral part of Visual Studio, and we are happy to bring it back to SSMS users. As noted in last week’s post, having this integration in SSMS 21 lays the groundwork to bring SQL projects to SSMS. The SQL projects team is focused on the current preview of SDK-style projects, which is work that must be completed before they can evaluate what needs to be done for support in SSMS. In the SSMS Roadmap blog post from March, I stated that we committed to determining the engineering effort to implement dark theme. Once we had an estimate of what it would cost, it felt like we had two options: halt all work on SSMS to implement dark theme, or never implement dark theme. Multiple members of the community suggested that we implement dark theme over time, starting with the most-used dialogs and then systematically working through all the dialogs. We made the decision to take that approach, with dark theme available initially for Object Explorer, the Query Editor and Results pane, and Template Explorer. If you enjoy dark theme and want to provide input as to what dialogs we should theme next, please try out SSMS 21 via the Preview channel and comment on this feedback item with your input. While our primary goal for SSMS 21 is to achieve parity with SSMS 20 (but obviously on Visual Studio 2022, with a new installer, etc.), we have been able to make other improvements. Some of those are thanks to Visual Studio 2022, others are community requests: Always Encrypted Assessment Support for vertical tabs in the editor (on the top right of the editor window, you’ll see a small gear icon, which will bring up the placement options) Additional options for tabs and windows (available in Tools > Options > Environment > Tabs and Windows) such as colorizing documents by project or file type, setting the minimum and maximum tab width, and more The ability to customize the font and background color for cells in the results gride that contain NULL values Create logins and users for Azure SQL database in the UI New page in the database properties dialog for Database Scoped Configuration options Language support for Czech, Polish, and Turkish What's fixed We also implemented a few bug fixes in this release. Most notably, users of Registered Servers and Central Management Servers (CMS) can now save connection settings, such as Trust Server Certificate. We also addressed a couple issues around SSMS hanging when trying to connect to an Azure SQL Database, and you type in the incorrect database name in the database dropdown, or the user doesn’t have permissions to all the databases on the logical server, or the database has been deleted and you try to connect to it. What's missing There are a lot of changes in SSMS 21, but when you open it for the first time, it has the familiar look of the application you’ve been using for years. We do have a few known issues in this preview, documented separate from the release notes. It’s important to note that SSMS 21 Preview 1 does not have support for Analysis Services and Integration Services, and therefore also does not have support for Maintenance Plans. We are working with the respective teams to bring these features back to SSMS 21 in a later preview. You’ll also likely notice some strings that reference Visual Studio – we are working through that list and hope to have them updated in the next preview. What's next Whew. We’re not done! There are additional projects that are in progress and will be available in later previews: Support for roaming settings and consolidation of settings Improving the startup time for SSMS Improving the Azure authentication experience New connection experience Format JSON output in the results pane Resolve the issue with SSMS forgetting passwords We've also added our roadmap to the documentation, which will update with major releases. Copilot and Extensions Last week we also announced that Copilot in SSMS will be available in Private Preview, therefore it is not available in this public preview of SSMS 21. If you would like to participate in the private preview, you can indicate your interest here. Copilot in SSMS will be an opt-in experience, available as an extension. On the topic of extensions, any third-party extensions for SSMS will need to be updated to 64-bit to work with SSMS 21. This may not be a trivial process for some individuals and companies. We recognize that some users won’t even try out the SSMS 21 Preview 1 release until their favorite extension is available, and we understand. We ask you to be patient with the folks that own those third-party extensions, as we were not able to share a build in advance to give them a head start on updating their extension. With the SSMS 21 Preview 1 release you can expect the same experience for extensions that you see in SSMS 20. Long-term, we will bring full support for extensions to SSMS, including the ability to browse extensions from within SSMS, a presence in the Visual Studio marketplace, and support of the VSIXInstaller. Feedback If we missed anything in this post, please check out the FAQ page to see if it’s addressed there. If not, please leave a comment and we’ll follow up. We will continue to leverage the feedback site to track the improvements the community wants to see in SSMS. If you have any issues with the SSMS 21 Preview 1 release, please log them on the feedback site (and please search within the Tooling group first!). For any issues you log, please include detailed steps to recreate, and it would be helpful to include "SSMS 21 Preview 1" in the feedback title. We will have multiple preview releases, and we would like to use this feedback loop to incorporate feedback and quickly resolve issues. Those of you that have read all the way to end: Bravo! You're a true SSMS supporter and our team appreciates your continued use of the tool we’ve poured our hearts into this year. We hope you enjoy exploring all the new features in SSMS 21, and we look forward to bringing you more previews in the coming months.Announcing the release of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 21.2.5
In this latest release, we’re excited to announce the return of SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) capabilities in Preview, Maintenance Plans (Preview), and new features in the Modern connection dialog (Preview) experience. To try it all out, go to Help > Check for Updates in SSMS, or update via the Visual Studio Installer. If you don’t have SSMS 21 yet, you can learn more about downloading and installing it here. As always, please read our release notes to get the full list of features and bug fixes. SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) (Preview) SSIS is now available in Preview for installation with SSMS 21.2.5. You can install it by selecting Modify in the Visual Studio Installer, adding the Business Intelligence workload, or from the Individual components tab if you only want SSIS. If you are updating a previously installed version of SSMS 21, after the update has finished installing you will need to go back to the Visual Studio Installer and add the SSIS component from the Modify workflow. rver Integration Services (SSIS) (Preview) from the Workloads tab in the Visual Studio Installer. In SSMS 21.2.5 you have access to the following functionality supported by SSIS: SSISDB catalog management Executing and scheduling packages using SQL Server Agent Jobs Data import and export wizard Copy database wizard Use SSMS to manage the SSISDB catalog – the repository for SSIS projects and packages which includes secure storage, package deployment, and efficient monitoring of execution logs. Automate your workflows using SQL Server Agent Jobs, perfect for scheduled or event-triggered package execution. The Import and Export Wizard offers a guided, user-friendly way to move data between sources and destinations. And the Copy Database Wizard helps you copy or move one or more databases from one SQL Server instance to another using SSIS (Preview). Maintenance Plans (Preview) Maintenance plans are back! These make it easier to automate routine database tasks like backups, index maintenance, and integrity checks, all without writing custom scripts. With a simple drag-and-drop interface, you can set up recurring jobs to: Back up your databases Update statistics Perform database integrity checks To get started, connect to your server in SSMS, expand the Management folder in Object Explorer, right-click Maintenance Plans, and select New Maintenance Plan. You can also use the Maintenance Plan Wizard to walk through creating a plan that runs on a schedule via SQL Server Agent. Create a new Maintenance Plan (Preview) from Object Explorer > Management > Maintenance Plans. Modern Connection Dialog (Preview) Updates We’ve continued to add new features to the Modern connection dialog (Preview) based on community feedback and suggestions. In this release we added a Browse tab, providing an easier way to explore your local, network, and Azure resources. The availability to browse registered servers (local server groups) and other cloud resources like Fabric SQL DBs and DWs will be added in a future release. When signed in to Azure, you can select which subscriptions to display. Selecting a resource will automatically populate the connection properties with the connection details. Thank you to the SSMS community for helping us identify where the connection dialog experience can be improved! This release, we reinstated the ability to add firewall rules directly from SSMS, See Modern Connection dialog cannot add firewall exceptions. As always, we hope you are enjoying this latest version of SSMS. We’re grateful for your feedback – keep it coming!
