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Category: Versions

SSMS 21 and the Visual Studio Installer

Published 2025-08-15 by Kevin Feasel

Randolph West clears up a few misconceptions about SQL Server Management Studio 21’s installer:

There’s been some confusion lately about the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) installation process for version 21.

Before Microsoft released SSMS 21, you had to download an installer file for each release (ever since SSMS was released as a standalone product with v16). This file eventually grew to be over 1GB, which is a significant download, especially in the case of a minor update.

With SSMS 21, Microsoft changed SSMS to use the Visual Studio installer. 

Read on to learn more about the ramifications of this decision. And there is still a way to install SSMS 21 in a secure environment without outbound internet access, although it does require a few more steps in addition to “download executable and then deploy executable to other machines.”

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Kafka: From ZooKeeper to KRaft

Published 2025-08-14 by Kevin Feasel

Phil Yang lays out how to make a migration:

Apache Kafka has made a landmark shift in KIP-500 with the introduction of Kafka Raft (KRaft) mode, eliminating the dependency on Apache ZooKeeper for metadata management. With KRaft, the Kafka nodes themselves can be configured as KRaft controllers – which allow for metadata management and leader elections to work all within just Kafka, resulting in significant performance improvements. This cemented KRaft’s status as the metadata management protocol for Kafka moving forward.

This blog will guide you through the importance of this transition, what migrating from ZooKeeper to KRaft entails, and how we, at NetApp Instaclustr, make this seamless with our automated, streamlined process that is built into our platform.

Click through to see how you can update your own clusters, whether you’re using the Instaclustr service or not.

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Regular Expression-Based String Splitting in SQL Server 2025

Published 2025-08-05 by Kevin Feasel

Aaron Bertrand splits a string:

SQL Server users have been asking for native regular expression support for over two decades. There are third-party Common Language Runtime (CLR) modules that offer this functionality, but these can be complicated to install and simply aren’t possible in some environments. I want to split a string using a regular expression instead of a static string. Will that be possible in SQL Server 2025, without CLR?

Must not rant about CLR. Must not rant about CLR. Must not rant about CLR. (By the way, if you ever catch me in person, get me going about how CLR got the short end of the stick and how the ‘modern’ forms of the Common Language Runtime in SQL Server are not great.)

Aaron tries out a function built into SQL Server that allows you to split strings into result sets using a regular expression to perform the splitting, and shows off some of the more complicated scenarios that this can solve over a normal STRING_SPLIT() function call.

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The CU+GDR Path in SQL Server’s Service Model

Published 2025-08-04 by Kevin Feasel

Jon Russell clarifies the situation:

SQL Server administrators often encounter Microsoft updates labeled as “CU + GDR”, and understandably, this can cause confusion — especially when trying to stay on a consistent CU-based servicing path. This post clarifies what “CU + GDR” really means and why it’s not something to worry about.

Read on for an overview of the different security models, as well as the odd duck in SQL Server 2016.

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Managing TempDB Growth with Resource Governor

Published 2025-07-23 by Kevin Feasel

Haripriya Naidu digs into what’s new in SQL Server’s Resource Governor:

In this article, we’ll focus on how to control TempDB datafile growth using Resource Governor (RG).

  • RG is disabled by default and available only on Enterprise edition.
  • Until SQL Server 2022, RG could only manage user databases.
  • Starting with SQL Server 2025, RG can now manage TempDB as well.

Click through for the demo and additional information.

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The PRODUCT() Function in SQL Server 2025

Published 2025-07-22 by Kevin Feasel

Ed Pollack points out a new function:

With each version of SQL Server, there are always a few new features introduced that we applaud as we finally have access to a useful function that is already available elsewhere.

Introduced in SQL Server 2025 CTP 1.3, the PRODUCT() function acts similarly to SUM(), but multiplies values rather than adds them. It is an aggregate function in SQL Server and therefore operates on a data set, rather than on scalar values.

Ed notes that there are aggregate and window function versions of PRODUCT() and shows examples of how it works.

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Summer 2025 SQL ConstantCare Population Report

Published 2025-07-17 by Kevin Feasel

Brent Ozar shares the numbers:

In this quarter’s update of our SQL ConstantCare® population report, showing how quickly (or slowly) folks adopt new versions of SQL Server, the data is very similar to last quarter. SQL Server 2019 still rules the market:

Click through to see where people are at in Brent’s sample of the market. Alan Cranfield has some numbers for SQL Server on AWS and those come pretty close to what Brent’s sample shows as well.

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What’s New in SQL Server 2025 CTP 2.1

Published 2025-07-03 by Kevin Feasel

Brent Ozar looks under the covers:

When CTP 2.0 came out, I blogged the thousands of new feature flags, messages, and system objects in SQL Server 2025 CTP 2.0, and I haven’t had the time to dig more deeply into those yet. In that post, I discussed the new sys.dm_feature_switches table, and I mentioned that it might disappear before release. Indeed it has – last week’s new CTP 2.1 removed access to that table, meaning that was probably our one-time shot to get a glimpse into something cool and undocumented. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when folks at Microsoft read my blog post and realized they’d left that table unguarded and publicly visible, hahaha. I love my job.

So now CTP 2.1 is out, and it comes with a few things I think you’re going to be interested in.

Read on to see what Brent has found.

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