
In a surprising move Microsoft have announced the retirement of Azure Data Studio on February 6th 2025.
Azure Data Studio was a development environment based on the Electron framework. It was particularly useful for working with SQL Server on Mac OS and Linux systems that SQL Server Management Studio is not available for. It featured an extensions system and connectivity to a number of different database systems. It was included with SQL Server Management Studio (although I found that it was frequently installed and forgotten about).
ADS will remain supported until February 28, 2026 giving time for developers and Mac/Linux DBAs time to transition. With ADS no longer under active development what other Microsoft tools can you use to develop for/on and manage SQL Server instances?
SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
The “go-to” tool for SQL Server DBAs and in many cases developers too. The most complete functionality can be found in SSMS such as managing SQL Server Agent jobs which can not be done natively in ADS or VS Code. SSMS is Windows only and does not run on Mac OS or Linux OSes.
SSMS 21 recently went into public preview which introduces 64-bit support, git integration and also many will be pleased to know now includes a dark theme.
VS Code with mssql Extension
VS Code is another Electron based tool with a bustling array of extensions available from the marketplace for not just SQL Server but also possibly every other programming language out there.
Microsoft recommends the mssql extension as the most direct way of transitioning from ADS. It should be noted that the extension apparently not provide feature parity with Azure Data Studio yet; quite a number of features are marked as preview such as Table Designer and Query Plan Visualiser.
Unlike SSMS, VS Code is cross platform and will run on Windows, Mac OS and Linux operating systems.
Like always managing SQL Server can be a challenge if your team aren’t up to date with the various developments in the products and tools available to them. That’s where we, Digital Incite and Matter Ltd, can step in to help you out with your data platform challenges. Get in touch with us today to discuss your needs further.