Performance testing is critical for delivering reliable, scalable applications. We have been working on AI-driven innovations in Azure Load Testing that will change how you author and analyze load tests.

AI-Assisted Authoring of JMeter Scripts

Writing high-quality load test scripts has traditionally required deep expertise. From setting correlations and think times to properly parameterizing inputs, it requires significant time and effort. This manual effort slows teams down, especially when they must recreate real-world scenarios under tight deadlines.

With our new AI-assisted authoring, that changes.

Now you can simply record your application journey, and Azure Load Testing will do the heavy lifting:

• Record your scenarios using the browser extension
• AI automatically suggests correlations to handle dynamic values
• Intelligent parameterization for more realistic test data
• Smart request labelling to help you organize flows cleanly
• Recommended think times to match actual user behavior

Once refined, a production-ready JMeter script is generated automatically. You can run this script immediately on Azure Load Testing with the scale and reliability you expect.

You can create complex, realistic performance tests created in a fraction of the time, even if you’re not a JMeter expert.

AI-Powered Actionable Insights

Performance tests don’t stop at execution. Real value comes from understanding what happened and knowing what to do next.

We have supercharged our insights experience with AI.

• Insights for Failed Test Runs: When a test fails, the first question is always: why?
  Now, Azure Load Testing uses AI to automatically analyze test run logs, detect the root cause, and provide clear guidance on what went wrong and how to fix it.
• Baseline Comparison Insights: Compare any test run against your defined baseline to immediately see what degraded, what improved, and which requests diverged from expected performance. It also helps understand the root cause for performance degradation.
• Focused Recommendations for Failed Test Criteria: If any of your pass/fail criteria fail, AI surfaces targeted recommendations so you can take corrective action quickly.

You get meaningful insights, even when things don’t go as planned. No more staring at graphs trying to figure out what to do next.

The Future of Load Testing Is Intelligent

With AI assisting script creation and analyzing test outcomes end-to-end, Azure Load Testing now helps teams:

• Run real world performance tests faster
• Troubleshoot with confidence
• Reduce manual debugging

The authoring capability will be available in the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile, you can try out AI-powered insights for your load test run to quickly analyze your results.

Please share your feedback here.

Happy Load Testing!

Today at Ignite, we announce the general availability of SQL Server 2025. This marks the latest milestone in the more than 30-year history of SQL Server. It is also a key part of our commitment to the one consistent SQL promise, delivering consistent experience across on-premises, cloud, and SaaS environments, with one engine and one unified platform.

Built on SQL Server’s foundation of best-in-class security, performance and availability, SQL Server 2025 is the AI-ready enterprise database and it redefines what's possible for enterprise data. With built-in AI and developer-first enhancements, SQL Server 2025 empowers customers to accelerate AI innovation using the data they already have, securely and at scale, all within SQL Server using the familiar T-SQL language. SQL Server 2025 is designed to meet customers where they are, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments, helping you build intelligent, secure, scalable, and consistent solutions that drive real business outcomes.

 SQL Server 2025 is experiencing significant momentum, as evidenced by 10,000 organizations participating in the public preview and 100,000 active SQL Server 2025 databases.

Leading customers like Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), Infios, and Buhler are already advancing with SQL Server 2025, supported by a robust ecosystem of technology partners including AMD, Canonical, HPE, Lenovo, NVIDIA, Pure Storage and Red Hat.

Key Innovations in SQL Server 2025

AI built-in

AI is now integrated directly into the SQL Server engine, enabling advanced semantic search for deeper insights and natural language experiences across enterprise data. Model management is built into T-SQL, supporting seamless integration with Microsoft Foundry, Azure OpenAI Service, OpenAI, Ollama, and more—deployable securely anywhere, from on premises to the cloud. Developers can easily switch between models without changing code, and essential AI building blocks like vector embedding, text chunking, and DiskANN indexing are natively supported. Integration with frameworks such as LangChain and Semantic Kernel accelerates AI-powered app development.

At Ivanti, our mission is to elevate human potential by managing, protecting, and automating technology to drive continuous innovation. SQL Server 2025 plays a crucial role in helping us achieve this goal. By harnessing the advanced capabilities of SQL Server 2025 and Azure OpenAI, we are building intelligent, agentic tools that empower customers to access knowledge and resolve incidents faster.

Sirjad Parakkat, Vice President, AI Engineering | Ivanti

Made for developers

This release is the most significant for SQL developers in a decade, streamlining development and boosting productivity. Native JSON support, REST APIs,RegEx and Fuzzy string match enable richer data enrichment and validation. Change event streaming allows real-time, event-driven applications by streaming changes directly from transaction to Azure Event Hubs, reducing resource overhead compared to CDC.

SQL Tooling

SQL Server 2025 delivers major updates across the data platform. SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS 22) is now generally available, offering official support for SQL Server 2025, enhanced AI assistance, and ARM64 support. SSMS 22 also includes AI assistance when you install the GitHub Copilot workload, which leverages the same GitHub subscription you use with GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio or VS Code. The Microsoft Python Driver for SQL Server (mssql-python) is generally available, providing a modern, high-performance connector with Entra ID authentication.

"SQL Server 2025 offers two major functionalities which are very important to us and will bring SQL Server into the future – native API calls and RAG. In the past we’ve had to use custom assemblies for making API calls, which can be a huge problem when you have to make hundreds of thousands of API calls and the remote systems are slow to respond, creating large queues and high CPU load in SQL. With RAG and vector search, we can now implement countless AI possibilities, making data searchable in ways previously impossible.”

Alex Ivanov, CTO, eDynamix

Best-in-class security, performance, and availability

SQL Server 2025 builds on its foundation as the most secure database in the last decade, introducing modern identity and encryption practices, including Microsoft Entra managed identities for improved credential management.

Optimized locking reduces lock memory consumption, minimizes blocking, and boosts concurrency. Tempdb space resource governance improves server reliability. Optional parameter plan optimization makes query performance more stable. SQL Server 2025 continues to strengthen its mission-critical capabilities with enhancements to Always On availability groups (AGs) and disaster recovery options. The focus is on faster failover, improved diagnostics, and hybrid flexibility.

Preliminary benchmarks show SQL Server 2025 running on AMD EPYC processors with HPE hardware delivers measurable gains in performance and value. For performance, the 10TB workload sets a new record for SQL Server. In price-performance, SQL Server 2025 achieves a 4% improvement in the 3TB category compared to previous results.

“At Infios, we are very excited about several new features in SQL Server 2025 and the vast amount of opportunities for performance improvements. We are most excited about the optimized locking feature and how that can drastically help reduce locking across our customers and all their unique workloads. Optional Parameter Plan Optimization (OPPO) could also be huge for us with SQL Server being able to reduce parameter sniffing issues. Persisted statistics on secondary replicas will also be beneficial for the rare occurrence that we have a failover event.

While we’ve been pleased with all the improvements to tempdb in previous versions, resource governance to prevent runaway queries and consuming large amounts of disk space in SQL 2025 is a big improvement for us. ”

Tim Radney, SaaS Operations Manager, Infios

Cloud agility through Azure

SQL Server 2025 enhances cloud agility with support for database mirroring in Fabric, enabling near real-time analytics with zero-ETL and offloading analytical workloads. Azure Arc integration continues to provide unified management, security, and governance for SQL estates across on-premises and cloud environments, empowering organizations to scale and modernize with confidence. 

“With Fabric Mirroring in SQL Server 2025, ExponentHR can effortlessly mirror numerous datasets to fabric, enabling near real-time analytics. This technology has alleviated the need for expensive and complex ETL operations and enables more productivity for our customers. Thanks to SQL Server 2025’s built-in cloud connectivity, we can directly process large amounts of data efficiently and overcome traditional bottlenecks.”

-- Brent Carlson, IT Manager, ExponentHR

SQL Server 2025 on Linux

SQL Server 2025 on Linux introduces several important enhancements. Security is strengthened with TLS 1.3 support, custom password policies, and signed container images. Platform support expands to include RHEL 10 and Ubuntu 24.04, while performance is improved through tmpfs support for tempdb and container-based deployments. Advanced analytics are enabled with generic ODBC data source support via PolyBase. Developer experience is streamlined with Visual Studio Code integration for local container deployment using the mssql extension and validated deployment patterns in partnership with Red Hat, supporting modern workloads and AI scenarios across hybrid environments.

"The work we’re doing with Microsoft to optimize SQL Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a powerful testament to the strength of our collaboration. With the new features in SQL Server, including support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 and enabling streamlined deployment via Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, we are making it easier than ever for customers to deploy and manage this critical workload across the hybrid cloud. This collaboration extends beyond just enabling core performance to deliver innovative, validated patterns, such as leveraging Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI with SQL Server for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)  and generative AI scenarios, and providing a more consistent experience for customers, whether they are deploying via the Azure Marketplace or on-premises. Our mutual goal is to minimize complexity, increase confidence and help enterprises harness the full potential of their data and AI investments on a trusted, open foundation." 

- Gunner Hellekson, Vice President and General Manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat

Preview Features & Flexibility

In SQL Server 2025, customers can explore new database features using an opt-in mechanism through database-scoped configurations. Certain features, such as vector indexes, are introduced this way, allowing customers to try them in preview even while SQL Server is generally available. These features will become fully available in a future SQL Server 2025 update, at which point the database-scoped configuration will no longer be required. Our goal is to make preview features generally available within approximately 12 months, guided by customer feedback and our commitment to delivering high-quality experiences. Learn more.

Product Changes

SQL Server 2025 brings important changes to the product lineup.

Standard edition changes: Resource limits have increased to support up to 32 cores and 256 GB of memory. Resource governor is now available in Standard edition. The newly launched Standard Developer edition offers full feature parity with the Standard edition, enabling development and testing that mirrors production environment capabilities. Power BI Report Server entitlement is now included for all editions except the Express edition, adding value for customers.

Express edition changes: The maximum database size is now increased to 50 GB per database. The Express Advanced mode has been consolidated into a single, unified SQL Express edition, featuring all feature capabilities that were available in Express Advanced.

Discontinuing Web edition in SQL Server 2025 release: SQL Server 2022 is the final version of the Web edition, with SQL Server 2022 Web edition remaining supported until January 2033 in line with Microsoft’s fixed lifecycle policy. If you've been using the Web edition for cost-effective web applications, now is a great time to consider migrating to Azure SQL. Azure SQL offers an affordable, scalable solution that is well-suited for modern web workloads. For multi-tenant apps, Azure SQL Database elastic pools provide flexible pricing and easy management—making the move to Azure SQL a smart choice for future growth.  If you remain on-premises or use Azure SQL Virtual Machines, upgrade to the Standard edition.

Modern Reporting and Analytics

On-premises SQL Server Reporting Service (SSRS) consolidated into Power BI Report Server is now the default reporting solution, unifying paginated and interactive reports for all paid SQL Server licenses. Learn more.

SQL Server Analysis Services 2025 introduces major performance enhancements, including improved MDX query efficiency, parallel DirectQuery execution, and visual DAX calculations for simplified modeling. It also adds new DAX functions, client library updates, and deprecates PowerPivot for SharePoint, while discontinuing HTTP access via msmdpump.dll by default. Learn more.

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) now introduces support for the Microsoft SqlClient Data Provider in ADO.NET connection manager, enhancing connectivity and modernizing data integration workflows. Learn more.

Partner Momentum

Partners such as AMD, Intel, and HPE are collaborating on advanced performance and high availability solutions, including benchmark testing on AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon processors, with HPE achieving world record results for performance and price/performance. NVIDIA is working with SQL Server 2025 to enable streamlined deployment of GPU-optimized AI models using built-in REST APIs, supporting flexible AI workloads across environments. Pure Storage is delivering high availability and fast backup solutions through deep integration with SQL Server 2025, including metadata-aware snapshots and automation for simplified operations. Additionally, Microsoft works closely with partners like Canonical and Red Hat to ensure SQL Server is integrated seamlessly and operates effectively within the Linux ecosystem, providing customers with robust and reliable database solutions across a broader range of environments.

Get Started Today

SQL Server 2025 reaffirms Microsoft’s commitment to innovation, performance, and developer empowerment. We thank our customers, partners, and community for your ongoing support and feedback. We look forward to seeing what you build next with the AI-ready enterprise database.

• Download SQL Server 2025 today
• One consistent SQL: the launchpad from legacy to innovation
• Learn more through documentation and our Mechanics video
• Master SQL Server 2025 with a full learning path and claim your badge
• Share your feedback at SQL Community