Rebecca Lewis separates marketing hype from reality:
Microsoft’s entire marketing pitch for SQL Server 2025 is ‘the AI-ready database.’ It went GA on November 18, 2025. We are now four months in. Here is what is actually GA, what is still behind a preview flag, and what that means if you are evaluating this for production.
Read on for a list, as well as a summary of Erik Darling’s great work on the topic.
My take on this is that vector indexes are where columnstore indexes were in SQL Server 2012: a neat idea, but not ready for prime time. It took until 2016 before columnstore indexes were actually worthwhile (primarily, the introduction of clustered columnstore indexes and ability to rebuild indexes), so we’ll see if it takes as long for vector indexes to get all of the necessary functionality.
And Json Indexes too
BrentO said they can be up to 30X the size of the underlying data?
My own benchs show about a 1.8X speedup over varchar(max)
Ho hum