My ninth year at the Pass Data Community Summit started off with the obligatory photo which has already garnished comments from my Florida peeps such as, “It looks cold.” The 55 degree days were actually pleasant, and the predicted rain stayed mostly away.
In years previous MICROSOFT spearheaded the Wednesday keynote, that was swapped this year with REDGATE going first and MICROSOFT on Thursday. There were a some vendor changes this year – let me explain — before diving into the content.
The two largest sponsors of PASS also run their own SUMMITS, Microsoft hosting IGNITE and AWS REINVENT. AWS’ REINVENT was scheduled a week later and with major layoffs at AWS, they did not have the manpower to do both conferences, I was told. MICROSOFT’s IGNITE conference fell the same week as PASS this year. That strained the number of qualified speakers, splitting them between the two conferences. However, Microsoft decided to send their top SQL SERVER experts to IGNITE the first half of the week and then onto PASS the last half of the week. So both IGNITE and PASS were privy to all the hype and presentations around the new release of SQL SERVER 2025. Redgate’s PASS SUMMIT information booth insists both MICROSOFT and AWS will be back at next year’s conference.
.
WEDNESDAY KEYNOTE: REDGATE
To say that any single presentation focused on AI would be an understatement. Nearly every presentation was centered on AI or new features where AI could be used. And it all started out right out of the gate (pun intended) with the first keynote by Redgate.
Redgate announced a new AI driven version of SQL SEARCH, their FREE database searching tool.
https://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-search
They gave us a demo of other upgraded software with AI integrated, naturally. Lastly, they showed us FUTURE versions they are working on, such as this AI driven performance monitor that allows you to simply ask where the bottleneck is in a database and all the appropriate monitoring pieces pop up, instantly, along with an analysis.
WAY INTO THE FUTURE – Redgate proposed that DBAs will be able to sit at the beach all day and simply monitor and manage all their databases through new REDGATE GLASSES. While I want to think they’re joking or this is just fantasy, I’m reminded how all of us at the PASS SUMMIT three years ago, dismissed AI as being a “fantasy for the future.”
.
THURSDAY KEYNOTE: MICROSOFT
Microsoft announced the release of SQL SERVER 2025 was official.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-downloads
Here are a few of the new changes they announced:
- Standard Editon will now allow 256-GB of ram instead of the previous limit of 128-GB
- Web Edition is discontinued.
- Express Edition maximum size is increased to 50-GB
- Fuzzy sting matches (In Preview node only for now)
- Reg-Expressions can be used in searches now
- Stored Procedures can call REST endpoints and update a PowerBi dashboard (Azure Only)
- Revised JSON datatype that will actually validate the JSON code.
- Native Support for parquet, Delta, CSV which means polybase service no longer required for these source type.
- Separate QueryStore for read-only replicas
.
AI INTEGRATION
- AI is integrated through GitHub into SSMS
- Vector functionality has been added. (VECTOR_SERACH, DISTANCE, NORMALIZE, INDEX, PROPERTY)
- External AI model management (CREATE, ALTER, DROP, model)
- AI Generate CHUNKS, and EMBEDDINGS
.
TSQL CHANGES
- SUBSTRING: “length” is now an optional parameter with a default to expression length.
- DATEADD: Support BigInt datatype
- CURRENT_DATE: Will return the database system date
- EDIT_DISTANCE: Calculates the number of operations required to transpose one string into another.
- CONCAT: Double pipe (||) can now be used as well as the comma (,)
.
SSRS & POWER BI CHANGES
SSRS will not be included in SQL Server 2025 and is being deprecated with end of life (EOL) hitting on January 11, 2033. We also know that EOL for SQL Server 2022 is January 11, 2027, so I asked, how are we supposed to handle that gap where we can use SSRS 2022 until 2033, but EOL has occurred for SQL Server 2022 in 2027? I was assured that the database portion of SSRS can be restored to, and run on, SQL 2025 even though the application portion will still only be SSRS 2022.
In place of SSRS, Microsoft is including POWERBI Server (at no additional cost) in all versions of SQL Server except Express. Additionally, the licensing fees for SQL Server 2025 WILL NOT INCREASE and the new version will cost the same as SQL Server 2022.
AWS QUESTIONS: One of my two questions was answered right after I wrote this blog. AWS has already made SQL Server 2025 with Power Bi included, available on EC2. There are EC2 images you can spin up right now. However, their blog post came short of saying much about the RDS version, such as will Power Bi be included? What about customers already using SSRS? and What timeframe are we looking at for availability in RDS?
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/modernizing-with-aws/whats-new-in-microsoft-sql-server-2025-on-aws
NEXT Microsoft gave a demo on a bunch of new features in FABRIC that are associated with AI and PowerBI. A lot of the new features in this demo seemed to me, to resemble functionality already encompassed in Azure Databricks.
FINALLY Microsoft announced the release of a new version of management studio: SSMS 22. That can be downloaded free from here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/ssms/install/install
WORKSHOPS
There were more than 200 sessions to select from this year. A quick search showed that nearly 75% touched on AI. The company I work with has a new product in development that does something with DATABRICKS. They were a major sponsor at the event, so I thought I would use a couple of my sessions to find out more about them, especially since the systems I work with might soon be minorly integrated with this new product.
Right at the start, I would have to say that the presenters from DATABRICKS were absolutely the best, almost as good as Bob Ward (Microsoft) who few can touch. They confessed they had been speakers at PASS more than ten years ago, and that certainly aided in their ability to bring a complicated new technology (AI, Models, Vectors, etc) into a demo for DBA’s and have us all actually understand what they were talking about. They gave us links to their FREE-FOREVER version that we could try out and play with.
And they bought us all lunch!
This year I do not have a WORST PRESENTATION AWARD to hand out. Every single session I attended was jammed with new information and electrifying speakers.
Just for FUN I decided to list the top five (5) speakers I connected to most and thought were the best.
- Bob Ward – Microsoft Keynote, Inside SQL Server 2025
- Nick Karpov – Databricks – Cooking with Databricks Pipelines, BI and AI Apps
- Noah Summerfield – Databricks Luncheon
- James Serra (from Florida) – Microsoft – Using GenAI on Structured Data
- Erin Stellato – Microsoft Breakfast, Microsoft Keynote, Inside SQL Server 2025
.
Next year’s PASS Summit is already on the calendar: November 9-11.
.
And lastly a HAPPY MOMENT at the hotel, over dinner Thursday night celebrating all the new features announced that day – and contemplating it over a glass of wine that is bound to be denied on my expense account! CHEERS!
