What's New in SQL Server 2025: Key Features and Enhancements

 

Introduction

The latest release of SQL Server 2025 brings major advancements designed to empower modern data workloads with AI integration, enhanced developer tools, and improved performance and security. This update positions SQL Server as a versatile platform for on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.

Edition and Capacity Updates

• Standard Edition: Increased capacity supporting up to 4 sockets or 32 cores with 256 GB buffer pool memory.

• Express Edition: Enlarged database size limit to 50 GB, now including all Advanced Services features.

• Developer Edition: New free editions (Standard and Enterprise) that fully mimic paid capabilities for development and staging purposes.

AI and Vector Capabilities

• Introduction of the vector data type to store embeddings in optimized binary JSON arrays for native similarity searches and machine learning tasks.

• New functions like VECTOR_DISTANCE, VECTOR_NORM, and VECTOR_NORMALIZE help perform efficient vector operations.

• Preview of the CREATE VECTOR INDEX feature to accelerate approximate nearest neighbor queries.

• Support for managing external AI models via REST endpoints, callable directly from SQL Server.

Developer and Language Enhancements

• Enhanced text processing with regular expression functions such as REGEXP_LIKE and REGEXP_REPLACE.

• Fuzzy string matching introducing similarity scoring functions like EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY and a preview of JARO_WINKLER_SIMILARITY.

• Real-time change event streaming for publishing data modification events to Azure Event Hubs in JSON or Avro formats.

• JSON support improvements, including aggregation and binary storage functions, enabling advanced data manipulation.

Performance and Database Engine Improvements

• Optimized locking mechanisms and tempdb governance to reduce blocking and prevent space exhaustion by runaway jobs.

• Introduction of cardinality estimation feedback for expressions and optional parameter plan optimization (OPPO) to enhance query performance.

• Faster backup compression with ZSTD and default Query Store enablement on readable secondaries.

Security and Availability

• Adoption of PBKDF2 password hashing for enhanced security and compliance.

• Support for managed identities with Azure Entra authentication and seamless integration with Azure Key Vault.

• Enhancements in Always On Availability Groups including asynchronous page requests, distributed groups, TLS 1.3 compliance, and faster failover.

• Advanced backup capabilities allowing full and differential backups on secondary replicas and immutable blob storage integration.

Conclusion

SQL Server 2025 delivers powerful new features tailored for AI-driven applications, robust developer experience, and enterprise-grade performance and security. Whether you’re managing traditional databases or modern data workloads, this release sets a new standard for SQL Server capabilities.

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