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Microsoft has launched SQL Server 2025, positioning the latest release of its flagship relational database as an "AI-ready enterprise database" that spans on-premises, cloud, and SaaS environments. Unveiled during Microsoft Ignite 2025, the release extends more than three decades of SQL Server development with built-in vector search, native JSON data handling, REST interfaces, and deep integration with Microsoft Fabric for near real-time analytics. Customers can download the new version for on-premises servers, deploy it on Azure SQL Virtual Machines, or consume its capabilities through related Azure SQL services.
A headline feature in SQL Server 2025 is integrated vector search inside the core database engine. Instead of offloading embeddings and similarity queries to a separate vector database, organizations can store embeddings alongside traditional tables and query them with familiar T- SQL syntax. This approach lets development teams build semantic search, recommendation systems, and RAG-style workloads directly on top...