This full-day workshop will get you up to speed on new powerful features in SQL Server 2025 and Azure SQL Database. Lenni will pull no punches as he rips through the most important SQL Server features for developers in this intensive demo-packed tour.

We'll kick things off with the broad multi-platform support across Windows, Linux, and Docker. Learn how SQL Server’s ability to run inside Linux containers on both Windows and Mac can revolutionize the way you develop solutions with the database engine. And we’ll explore the Intelligent Query Processing (IQP) features that deliver groundbreaking performance improvements to the query engine.

Then we’ll move on to the latest development platform improvements, including T-SQL enhancements for fuzzy matching, regular expressions, pattern searching, and more. We’ll cover temporal tables, plus the brand-new native JSON data type, JSON functions, and blazing-fast JSON indexing to achieve high-performance document-style queries within the database.

We’ll dive into AI with native vector support and DiskANN indexing, enabling high-performance semantic search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)—plus the ability to securely define and reuse AI models, empowering your database with natural language AI search capabilities. And you’ll discover how Data API Builder enables you to instantly create REST and/or GraphQL endpoint services right over your database tables, views, and stored procedures.

Next, we’ll explore security features, starting with ledger tables. With ledger, SQL Server utilizes blockchain technology that hashes every transaction, and guarantees tamper evidence in your database. Then we’ll examine row-level security and Always Encrypted, with support for secure enclaves to enable rich querying over encrypted data. We’ll wrap up with the latest PolyBase enhancements to query external data in Azure Blob Storage, Mongo DB, Oracle, and other remote data sources.

You’ll learn a ton of new SQL Server 2025 features in this information-packed day!

You will learn:

• Apply the latest SQL Server 2025 developer features, including T-SQL enhancements, the native JSON data type, and native vector support for AI-driven scenarios like semantic search and RAG
• Develop solutions with SQL Server 2025 across platforms and environments, including Windows, Linux, and Docker containers
• Implement modern security, development, and integration features, such as ledger tables, row-level security, dynamic data masking, temporal tables, and PolyBase