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Azure SQL Managed Instance
This article summarizes the documentation changes associated with new features and improvements in the recent releases of Azure SQL Managed Instance. To learn more about Azure SQL Managed Instance, see What is Azure SQL Managed Instance?
Note
Microsoft Entra ID was previously known as Azure Active Directory (Azure AD).
Preview
The following table lists the features of Azure SQL Managed Instance that are currently in preview.
Note
Features currently in preview are available under supplemental terms of use, review for legal terms that apply to Azure features that are in beta, preview, or otherwise not yet released into general availability. Azure SQL Managed Instance provides previews to give you a chance to evaluate and share feedback with the product group on features before they become generally available (GA).
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Approximate or fuzzy string matching | Check if two strings are similar, and calculate the difference between two strings. Use this capability to identify strings that might be different because of character corruption. |
| Database watcher for Azure SQL | Database watcher is a managed monitoring solution for database services in the Azure SQL family. Database watcher collects in-depth workload monitoring data to give you a detailed view of database performance, configuration, and health. Learn more about database watcher. |
| DATEADD number allows bigint | For DATEADD (datepart, number, date), number can be expressed as a bigint. |
| Endpoint policies | Configure which Azure Storage accounts can be accessed from a SQL Managed Instance subnet. Grants an extra layer of protection against inadvertent or malicious data exfiltration. |
| Modernization Advisor | Use the Modernization Advisor in the Azure portal to help you determine if migrating to Azure SQL Managed Instance from a SQL Server VM saves you money or optimizes performance. |
| SDK-style SQL project | Use Microsoft.Build.Sql for SDK-style SQL projects in the SQL Database Projects extension in Visual Studio Code. SDK-style SQL projects are especially advantageous for applications shipped through pipelines or built in cross-platform environments. |
| Service Broker | Support for cross-instance message exchange using Service Broker between instances of Azure SQL Managed Instance, and between SQL Server and Azure SQL Managed Instance. |
| Vector data type and functions | Working with vector data is now easier in Azure SQL Managed Instance with the introduction of a new vector data type and vector functions. For more information, see Intelligent applications with Azure SQL Managed Instance. |
General availability (GA)
The following table lists features of Azure SQL Managed Instance that have been made generally available (GA) within the last 12 months:
| Feature | GA Month | Details |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Server 2025 update policy | March 2026 | Align your SQL managed instance database format with the SQL Server 2025 database engine. |
| Regular expression functions | November 2025 | Regular expression (REGEX) functions return text based on values in a search pattern. |
| Flexible memory | November 2025 | Save on cost by choosing the memory allocation for your Next-gen General Purpose instance based on your workload needs. |
| Next-gen General Purpose | November 2025 | An architectural upgrade of the General Purpose service tier that uses Elastic SAN storage for greater resource flexibility, and improved performance while maintaining the same baseline cost as the General Purpose service tier. |
| Migrate SQL Server to Azure | October 2025 | Migrate your SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc instance to Azure SQL Managed Instance through the Azure portal. |
| Optimized locking | July 2025 | Azure SQL Managed Instance with the Always-up-to-date and SQL Server 2025 update policy now has optimized locking enabled for all user databases. |
| UNISTR (Transact-SQL) | July 2025 | Azure SQL Managed Instance now supports the UNISTR T-SQL syntax for Unicode string literals. |
| || (String concatenation) and ||= (Compound assignment) syntax support | July 2025 | Azure SQL Managed Instance now supports || (String concatenation) and ||= (Compound assignment) Transact-SQL syntax. |
| Degrees of parallelism (DOP) feedback | July 2025 | DOP feedback improves query performance by identifying parallelism inefficiencies for repeating queries, based on elapsed time and waits. For more information, see the Smarter Parallelism: Degree of parallelism feedback in SQL Server 2025 blog. |
| Vector data type and functions | June 2025 | Working with vector data is now easier in Azure SQL Managed Instance with the Always-up-to-date policy, with the introduction of a new vector data type and vector functions. For more information, see Intelligent applications with Azure SQL Database. |
| Zone redundancy for General Purpose | June 2025 | Deploy your General Purpose SQL Managed Instance to multiple availability zones to improve the availability of your instance in the event of a disaster. |
| Invoke an HTTPS REST endpoint SP | June 2025 | Use the sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint stored procedure to invoke an HTTPS REST endpoint provided as an input argument to the procedure. |
| TLS 1.3 support for replication | May 2025 | Configure Azure SQL Managed Instance replication agents to use TLS 1.3. |
| Free SQL Managed Instance | May 2025 | Try Azure SQL Managed Instance for free for the first 12 months after an instance is created. |
| JSON native data type | May 2025 | The json data type provides new capabilities for handling semistructured data in Azure SQL Managed Instance. |
| JSON aggregate functions | May 2025 | Two json aggregate functions (JSON_OBJECTAGG and JSON_ARRAYAGG) enable construction of JSON objects or arrays based on an aggregate from SQL data. |
| MI link from SQL Server 2017 | March 2025 | Configure a link from SQL Server 2017 to Azure SQL Managed Instance. |
Documentation changes
Learn about significant changes to the Azure SQL Managed Instance documentation. For previous years, see the What's new archive.
March 2026
| Changes | Details |
|---|---|
| SQL Server 2025 update policy GA | Align your SQL managed instance database format with the SQL Server 2025 database engine. This update policy is now generally available. For more information, review SQL Server 2025 update policy. |
December 2025
| Changes | Details |
|---|---|
| Traffic management | Learn about how network traffic is managed in Azure SQL Managed Instance, including user-managed and service-managed traffic. Review Traffic management overview to learn more. |
November 2025
| Changes | Details |
|---|---|
| Regular expression functions preview | Regular expression (REGEX) functions return text based on values in a search pattern. Regular expression (REGEX) functions are now generally available for Azure SQL Managed Instance. For more information, see Regular expressions or General Availability Announcement: Regex Support in SQL Server 2025 & Azure SQL. |
| Flexible memory GA | Save on cost by choosing the memory allocation for your Next-gen General Purpose instance based on your workload needs. This capability is now generally available. To learn more, review Flexible memory. |
| Next-gen General Purpose GA | An architectural upgrade of the General Purpose service tier that uses Elastic SAN storage for greater resource flexibility, and improved performance while maintaining the same baseline cost as the General Purpose service tier. This upgrade to the service tier is now generally available (GA). To learn more, review Next-gen General Purpose. |
| Zone redundancy add-on for GP | To help save on cost, the zone redundancy reservation add-on is now available for Azure SQL Managed Instance in the General Purpose service tier. To learn more, review zone redundancy reservation add-on. |
October 2025
| Changes | Details |
|---|---|
| Database migration GA | Migrate your SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc instance to Azure SQL Managed Instance through the Azure portal. This feature is now generally available (GA). Review Migrate SQL Server instance to Azure SQL Managed Instance to learn more. |
| Redirect connection type default | The redirect connection type is now default for all new and existing instances. The redirect connection type has better latency and throughput performance compared to the legacy proxy connection type. SQL managed instances with the proxyOverride value set to Default before October 2025 are converted to the legacy Proxy connection type, which you can change to Redirect manually using the Azure portal or PowerShell. |
September 2025
| Changes | Details |
|---|---|
| New Azure SQL hub | Choosing the right Azure SQL service can be challenging. To make this easier, we built the Azure SQL hub at aka.ms/azuresqlhub, a new home for everything related to Azure SQL in the Azure portal. For more information, read the blog post Introducing the Azure SQL hub: A simpler, guided entry into Azure SQL. |
| SQL Server 2025 update policy preview | Align your SQL managed instance database format with the SQL Server 2025 database engine. This capability is now in preview. To learn more, review SQL Server 2025 update policy. |
Archive
For previous news, see the What's new archive.
Known issues
The known issues content has moved to a dedicated known issues in SQL Managed Instance article.
Contribute to content
To contribute to the Azure SQL documentation, see the Docs contributor guide.