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Category: Versions

What’s Forthcoming for DBAs in SQL Server 2025

Published 2025-06-05 by Kevin Feasel

Stephen Planck has a list:

There is a lot to be excited about in SQL Server 2025! When thinking about features that may not get as much attention as others, yet will make a real difference in the lives of DBAs, I have selected my top 5 enhancements for SQL Server 2025. These improvements may not make the headlines, but they address pain points we’ve all experienced as DBAs. Please let me know if I’ve left any of your favorites off the list.

Read on for the list. It’s not a set of fancy new features, though there are some quality of life improvements here.

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What’s New in Apache Spark 4.0

Published 2025-06-03 by Kevin Feasel

Ram Ghadiyaram looks at recent updates to Apache Spark:

Hurray! Apache Spark 4.0, released in 2025, redefines big data processing with innovations that enhance performance, accessibility, and developer productivity. With contributions from over 400 developers across organizations like Databricks, Apple, and NVIDIA, Spark 4.0 resolves thousands of JIRA issues, introducing transformative features: native plotting in PySpark, Python Data Source API, polymorphic User-Defined Table Functions (UDTFs), state store enhancements, SQL scripting, and Spark Connect improvements. This report provides an in-depth exploration of these features, their technical underpinnings, and practical applications through original examples and diagrams.

Click through to see what’s on the list of major features.

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Creating a SQL Server 2025 Container

Published 2025-06-02 by Kevin Feasel

Vlad Drumea tries out SQL Server 2025:

This post covers creating SQL Server 2025 containers in Podman, Qnap Container Station, and sqlcmd, and restoring a sample database to test the new version.

One important thing to remember is that all SQL Server 2025 containers are based on the Linux build of SQL Server. For 90% of tasks (give or take), that won’t matter, and you’ll still have a good time trying out the new version of SQL Server and make sure things still work in your databases the way you expect them to. But some functionality (e.g., merge replication) is not available in Linux and other functionality (like PolyBase or Machine Learning Services) has a very different installation process.

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Performing PostgreSQL Version Upgrades

Published 2025-05-29 by Kevin Feasel

Warda Bibi upgrades a server:

Upgrading to the latest version ensures long-term stability, access to new features, and better support. Recently, I worked on upgrading a critical production PostgreSQL environment from version 11 to 15. Version 15 was chosen because the client’s application had only been tested up to that release.  The system supported large batch workloads and live applications, so we had to be meticulous. While this article draws from that specific project, the steps are broadly applicable to anyone planning a major PostgreSQL upgrade, especially when crossing several versions.

This guide outlines a generalized, production-ready approach for performing major version upgrades using the pg_dump/pg_restore method.

Click through for two upgrade methods and some of the things to keep in mind during the process.

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SQL Server Standard Developer Edition

Published 2025-05-22 by Kevin Feasel

Ed Pollack is pleased:

SQL Server Developer Edition has for years provided a free data platform to test and develop applications in an environment that has all SQL Server features available at no cost to the organizations that use it. So long as these SQL Servers do not host production workloads, then this edition is ideal for database development.

Starting in SQL Server 2025, a new edition is available for installation: SQL Server Developer Standard Edition. This article dives into this edition, the problems it solves, and why it is a great addition for development teams that use SQL Server!

This is something people in the community have agitated over for years. It’s great that Developer edition has all of the features of Enterprise, but that can be a problem when you build your apps against the equivalent of Enterprise and deploy them to Standard, as there’s a risk you’re using an Enterprise-only feature but don’t know it.

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Running SQL Server 2022 on Ubuntu 24.04

Published 2025-05-20 by Kevin Feasel

Laerte Junior gives it a go:

Microsoft does not yet support this edition of Ubuntu, but there are some workarounds to make it work. This should not be used for production usage and this blog is for educational/testing purposes only.

For my installation, I am using an AWS EC2 Ubuntu 24.04 with 2 GB of Ram. 2GB of RAM is the minimum required. This guide is targeted towards people who have installed SQL Server on previous versions of Ubuntu.

Laerte got it to work, but honestly, I’d rather wait for official support, especially if you’re stuck installing older versions of security-related packages (libldap vs the libldap2 that exists on Ubuntu 24.04).

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New Capabilities in SQL Server 2025 CTP 2.0

Published 2025-05-20 by Kevin Feasel

Randolph West lays out some favorite features:

Three years ago, when the first public preview of SQL Server 2022 (CTP 2.0) was announced, I was a few months in at the SQL Docs team, and had very little to do with that release.

Three years later, the team is slightly larger (we’re called Data Docs now), and I was much more involved with helping scores of people merge the content for SQL Server 2025 (CTP 2.0).

Click through for Randolph’s favorite features for administrators and for developers that are available right now in the community technical preview.

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Goodbye, Azure ML SDK v1

Published 2025-04-30 by Kevin Feasel

I have a new video:

In this video, I cover some news from Microsoft around the deprecation of the Azure Machine Learning SDK v1. We’ll take a look at the upgrade guide and see what it will take to perform this upgrade.

Microsoft will still support the SDK v1 until September of 2026, so we have a year to get code sorted out. The CLI v1, however, will go away sooner, so be sure you’re keeping up on that.

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What’s New in R 4.5.0

Published 2025-04-11 by Kevin Feasel

Russ Hyde checks out the changes:

R 4.5.0 (“How About a Twenty-Six”) was released on 11th April, 2025. Here we summarise some of the interesting changes that have been introduced. In previous blog posts we have discussed the new features introduced in R 4.4.0 and earlier versions (see the links at the end of this post).

The full changelog can be found at the r-release ‘NEWS’ page and if you want to keep up to date with developments in base R, have a look at the r-devel ‘NEWS’ page.

There are some nice bits of functionality on the list, so check it out.

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