Showing category results for Azure SQL

For decades, DBAs relied on linked servers to stitch data together. If you needed data from two places, you wired them up and moved on. It worked. It was straightforward. It felt native to SQL. But what if linked servers are not an option? What if policy blocks them? What if one of the systems is not SQL or lives in another cloud? How do you cross...

Perhaps we missed it at first, but Copilot is more than comfortable with SQL. This goes beyond autocomplete. This is moving from nothing to a working database without leaving our tools. Have we really arrived? Yes, sort of. For database engineers and app engineers alike, we have crossed an important line. Making us more productive is easy for Copi...

The SQL + AI Datathon is a hands‑on challenge designed to show how the foundations for building modern, intelligent applications with SQL. Over a set of guided missions and a focused open hack, you’ll learn how to combine SQL with embeddings, semantic search, and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to build real AI‑powered experiences. Th...

Applications often need to know what data looked like before. Who changed it, when it changed, and what the previous values were. Rebuilding that history in application code is tedious and error prone. This is especially valuable when exposing a database to an AI agent through MCP servers like SQL MCP Server, where information discovery matters. ...

Applications often need access to data without needing access to everything. Social Security numbers, email addresses, and phone numbers are common examples. Storing them is required. Exposing them broadly is not. This is especially valuable when exposing a database to an AI agent through MCP servers like SQL MCP Server, where safety and reversibil...

Sometimes applications need to remove data without actually losing it. Soft delete keeps rows in the database while making them invisible to normal application access. This is especially valuable when exposing a database to an AI agent through MCP servers like SQL MCP Server, where safety and reversibility matter. Learn more about SQL MCP Serve...

When developers hear "cloud" and "AI," their first thought is often about cost. "How much will this cost me to learn? Can I build something meaningful without racking up a surprise bill?"   Budget Bytes is a new series is designed to inspire developers to build affordable, production-quality AI applications on Azure with a budget of $25 or...

Supporting re‑ranking has been one of the most common requests lately. While not always essential, it can be a valuable addition to a solution when you want to improve the precision of your results. Unfortunately, there isn’t a universal, standardized API for a “re‑rank” call across providers, so the most reliable approach today is to issue a manua...

Overview Working with table data is an essential part of database development — whether you’re validating behavior, debugging issues, or quickly seeding data. But switching between tools or writing repetitive T-SQL statements can slow down your workflow. We are excited to announce the Public Preview of Edit Data in the MSSQL extension for Visual ...

At the start of this year, we released a new set of T-SQL AI features for embedding your relational data for AI applications. Today, we have brought those features to Azure SQL and SQL database in Microsoft Fabric. This post will help you get started using the new AI functions of Azure SQL. Prerequisites Set up your env...