New Year's Resolution for DBAs: Make Peace with Copilot

2026 is here. SQL Server 2025 is GA. Copilot is in SSMS 21 -- and someone on your Team is already asking it to write stored procedures. In entirety.

You can resist this. Or, you can learn the rules of engagement.

I've spent 25+ years with SQL Server. I've watched game-changing features come and go. Remember when Machine Learning Services was supposed to revolutionize everything? How about Stretch Database? Exactly. So when MSFT announced that SQL Server 2025 would be AI-ready with Copilot baked into SSMS, my first instinct was to wait for the dust to settle.

The dust has settled. Here's what I've learned.

What Copilot in SSMS Actually Does

Copilot in SSMS 21 connects to Azure OpenAI (your subscription, your resources) and does three things reasonably well:

1. Generates tSQL from plain English. You type 'show me all orders from the last 30 days where the customer is in Texas' and it spits out a query. Sometimes it's exactly what you wanted. Sometimes it assumes joins you didn't intend. Always — and I cannot stress this enough — always read what it wrote before you run it.

2. Explains execution plans in human language. This is genuinely useful. Point Copilot at a ugly execution plan and ask 'why is this slow?' You'll get a plain-English explanation that would have taken you 20 minutes to piece together. It's not always right, but it's a decent first pass. Sometimes.

3. Explores your environment. Ask 'what version is this instance?' or 'show me the largest tables in this database', and it handles the busywork. Fine for discovery. Not a replacement for knowing your own systems.

What Copilot Gets Wrong

Here's where the 25 years of scar tissue kicks in.

Copilot doesn't know your workload. It doesn't know that the query you just asked for will run against a table that gets hammered by OLTP inserts every second. It doesn't know your indexing strategy, your maintenance windows -- or the fact that someone named a column 'Date' in 2007 and you've been living with it ever since.

It generates syntactically correct tSQL that can be operationally disastrous. I've seen it suggest indexes that made sense on paper but crushed insert performance. I've seen it write queries that worked perfectly in dev but caused table scans and blocking in production.

The AI doesn't know what it doesn't know. And neither will the DBA who trusts it blindly.

The Rules of Engagement

Here's how I'm approaching Copilot in 2026:

Use it as a first draft, never a final answer. Copilot is a starting point. It's the intern who hands you something that's 70% there. You still need to review, test, and understand what it produced.

Validate in a non-production environment. Every. Single. Time. I don't care if Copilot says it's a 'simple' SELECT. Run it in dev first. Check the query plan. Look at the IO statistics. Then decide if it's production-ready.

Understand before you deploy. If Copilot generates a query and you can't explain what it does, don't deploy it. Period. This isn't gatekeeping — it's survival. When that query blows up at 2AM, Copilot isn't answering the phone. You are.

Keep learning tSQL. The temptation might be to let Copilot write everything and slowly forget how to do it yourself. Resist that. The DBAs who thrive in the AI era will be the ones who understand the fundamentals deeply enough to catch AI mistakes — not the ones who outsource their skills to ChatGPT.

The Bigger Picture

I'll be honest: I don't know where this goes.

SQL Server 2025 also shipped with native vector search, semantic queries, and something Microsoft calls 'Query Intelligence' that claims to understand intent rather than just syntax. The database is getting smarter. The tools are getting smarter -- and the pressure to adopt them is already increasing every day.

Here's what I do know: the fundamentals haven't changed. Data integrity matters. Performance tuning matters. Understanding your systems WILL ALWAYS matter. AI can accelerate your work, but it can't replace the judgment that comes from years of experience — the instinct that tells you something's wrong before the monitoring alerts fire.

So my SQL Server resolution for 2026? Make peace with Copilot. Use it where it helps. Verify everything. Trust nothing blindly. And keep sharpening the skills that got me here in the first place.

The robots aren't taking our jobs yet. But they're watching closely and taking notes...

Happy New Year.