As we approach the first public releases of SQL Server 2025, it’s fun to start spelunking through things Azure SQL DB has today – announced and unannounced – that aren’t yet present in the boxed product version of SQL Server.
Microsoft staff used to say that Azure SQL DB is “the next version” of the boxed product, meaning that Microsoft tested, tweaked, and proved new features in the cloud while they could still rapidly iterate over code, shipping updates to make the product more reliable and scalable. In practice, that’s not entirely true: some things never leave the cloud, and