SQL Database Roadmap

by
Andrew Snodgrass

by
Andrew Snodgrass

Andrew analyzes and writes about Microsoft's data management, business intelligence, and machine learning solutions, as well as aspects of licensing... more

Updated Sep-2025: SQL Database is receiving natural language queries from SQL Server 2025, but customers should be careful with the extra compute resources required. Other data query and performance updates show Microsoft continued investment in the service and a general maturity of the service.

Azure SQL Database is a multitenant relational database management cloud service based on SQL Server‘s latest database engine for individual database deployments. SQL Database is part of the Azure SQL brand of services that also includes Azure SQL Managed Instance, Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure SQL Edge, Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance, and SQL Server in Azure VMs.

Product: SQL Database

Licensing: SQL Database

Recent Updates and Near-Term Roadmap (2025–2026)

Azure SQL Database continues to remain in sync with the base SQL Server database engine, sometimes receiving new features before they reach on-premises, but more often seeing new features arrive at the same time.