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Expert Insight: what's new in SQL Server 2025

Matiss KrastinsGroup Solution Advisor

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In 2025, no product launch was complete without mentioning AI. But in the case of SQL Server 2025, Microsoft made sure that AI was more than a mere buzzword. This release shipped with significant improvements that will genuinely help organizations develop AI applications.

The refinements go well beyond AI capabilities too.

SQL Server 2025 brings substantial updates to edition structures, development tools, and cloud integration that will directly affect how service providers and IT teams plan their database strategies.

This blog post outlines the highlights for you.

AI capabilities and development tools

SQL Server 2025 now supports the vector data type, enabling semantic search without requiring a separate vector database. This is a big deal. Additionally, T-SQL can now tap directly into AI services such as ChatGPT and others, bringing AI capabilities right into your database queries.

Developers and service providers will appreciate the improvements focused on development and cloud integration. SQL Server 2025 includes advanced JSON handling, native RegEx in T-SQL, REST APIs, and GraphQL integration. These aren't just features: they're tools that reduce complexity and speed up modern application development.

You can now utilize Azure EventHubs and Kafka to capture real-time change events from the database. Fabric Mirroring allows seamless integration with Microsoft Fabric to mirror your data to Fabric lakehouse. That means less middleware, fewer moving parts, and tighter integration with your cloud ecosystem.

All this makes SQL Server 2025 a significant improvement from previous generations. You're looking at a reduced need for additional database engines, faster modern app development, improved database performance, and better service availability.

Significant changes to SQL Server editions

You will also now find substantial changes to the SQL Server edition lineup. Some of these will require planning if you're a service provider or managing on-premises deployments.

Web Edition discontinued

SQL Web Edition, the version exclusive to SPLA that's limited to supporting websites, applications, and services, is discontinued in 2025. Microsoft is pushing migration from on-premises databases licensed under SPLA to Azure SQL Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS).
Service providers running web applications can continue with SQL Server 2022 Web Edition until 2033 under Microsoft's lifecycle policy. That gives you time. For on-premises deployments, SQL Server Express now supports larger databases (see below) if you can work with the limitations (no SQL Server Agent, no High Availability features.) For mission-critical applications, you'll need SQL Server Standard for on-premises installations.

If staying on-premises isn't essential, Azure SQL is Microsoft's intended target for those who need scalable databases for web applications. And it's a solid option.

Express grows 5x

Express edition now allows databases up to 50GB, up from 10GB. That's a fivefold increase. Better yet, Express includes all the new core functionality that paid versions have – vector search, JSON support, REST, change event streaming, Fabric mirroring, and Microsoft Entra ID authentication.
For smaller deployments and development environments, this is a substantial upgrade.

A new Developer edition

SQL Server 2025 introduces a Standard Developer edition alongside the existing Developer and Enterprise Developer editions. This gives developers more flexibility to match their development environment to their target production edition.

Standard becomes more powerful

SQL Server Standard 2025 now supports 32 CPU cores and 256GB of memory. Compare that to previous limits and you're looking at serious capability expansion. New features include optimized locking, resource governor, and ZSTD backup compression algorithm.

Power BI Report Server entitlement is now included for all editions except Express. That's additional value without additional licensing complexity.

What about pricing and hybrid deployments?

Is it more expensive?

No. Microsoft hasn't announced any pricing changes. The 2025 SPLA pricing updates left SQL Server untouched. So at least until 2027, expect no changes to SQL Server pricing under SPLA unless Microsoft adjusts for foreign exchange rate fluctuations.

Arc integration for hybrid deployments

SQL Server remains the service where Arc integration makes the most sense. You get extended management, governance, security features, and potential savings of up to 20% for Arc-connected SQL Servers. This holds true with SQL Server 2025. Just as with SQL Server 2022, you can connect the database instance to Azure Arc during installation on Windows.

The most notable Arc-related improvement in SQL Server 2025 is full support for Microsoft Entra managed identities. Users can authenticate to Azure services without managing credentials. For hybrid deployments, this simplifies security management considerably.

The takeaway

SQL Server 2025 has arrived as the Enterprise AI-ready database, seamlessly integrating native vector search, advanced intelligence, and deep cloud capabilities from the ground up to Microsoft Fabric. The edition changes are substantial, particularly for service providers dealing with the Web Edition discontinuation. But with Express growing 5x and Standard becoming more powerful, there are clear upgrade paths for most scenarios.

The development improvements (native AI integration, modern APIs, real-time streaming) position SQL Server 2025 as a genuinely modernized platform.

With no pricing changes on the horizon, the value proposition is clear.

Next steps

If you'd like to find out more about SQL Server 2025, contact your local SoftwareOne representative to discuss upgrading, migrating, or any other related questions.