Microsoft spent 2025 teaching SQL Server to write its own queries, explain its own execution plans, and search by meaning instead of keywords.
I spent 2025 wondering if I'm training my replacement.
SQL Server 2025 is GA. Here's what's real, what's fuzzy, and why your job just got harder.
What Actually Shipped
Copilot in SSMS 21. Natural language to T-SQL. You type 'show me customers who haven't ordered in 90 days' and get this:
SELECT c.CustomerID, c.CustomerName, MAX(o.OrderDate) AS LastOrder
FROM Customers c
LEFT JOIN Orders o ON c.CustomerID = o.CustomerID
GROUP BY c.CustomerID, c.CustomerName
HAVING MAX(o.OrderDate) < DATEADD(DAY, -90, GETDATE())
OR MAX(o.OrderDate) IS NULL;
Looks fine. But did you want customers with no orders included? Copilot assumed yes. Hope that's what you meant.
Native Vector Search. SQL Server now stores embeddings and searches by similarity:
SELECT TOP 10 ProductName, Description
FROM Products
ORDER BY VECTOR_DISTANCE('cosine', DescriptionEmbedding,
AI_GENERATE_EMBEDDINGS('noise cancelling headphones'))
Semantic search without leaving tSQL. Whether it performs like the dedicated tools remains to be seen.
Query Intelligence. The optimizer now second-guesses your code — suggests rewrites, recommends indexes, sometimes acts autonomously. The engine has opinions now.
The Problem
Your attack surface just expanded. Copilot connects to Azure OpenAI. Vector search calls external models. Query Intelligence makes decisions without asking. New dependencies, new failure modes, new 2AM phone calls.
The 'helpful' suggestions aren't always helpful. I've seen Query Intelligence recommend indexes that slowed things down. Rewrites that made assumptions I didn't intend. The AI is confident and fast -- but it's also wrong more than MSFT cares to admit.
And your junior staff or the Dev-Team DBAs? They'll trust it completely — until they deploy AI-generated code that takes production to its knees.
What Still Matters
Understanding beats speed. Context is everything. Accountability doesn't delegate.
When production goes down, nobody's asking Copilot what happened. They're asking you.
The Bottom Line
2025 was the year SQL Server learned to talk back.
2026 is the year we have to learn how to listen.
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