SSMS 18.0 Public Preview 6 released
We are very excited to announce the Public Preview 6 of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 18.0. In the spirit of more frequent releases, Preview 6 brings another incremental update to SSMS 18.0. This release has new features and capabilities, several bug fixes across SQL Server Management Objects (SMO), intelliSense improvements in UI, etc.
You can download SSMS 18.0 Public Preview 6 today and review more details in the Release Notes.
As your on-premise SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 installations approach their end of life support, are you looking for ways to modernize your database environments by migrating to Azure? If so, consider the following:
Typically, you first want to assess your on-premise databases to identify any potential SQL Server features and/or compatibility issues that can impact database functionality after you move to the newer version of SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, or Azure SQL Database Managed Instance. Next, you should plan for any needed fixes that you will need to accommodate in your target Azure Database platform after migration, as recommended by the Data Migration Assistant (DMA), and then you are ready to migrate your databases to Azure.
In Preview 6 of SQL Server Management Studio 18, in the Tools menu we have integrated our Data Migration Assistant (DMA) tool and Azure Database Migration Service (DMS) to provide quick and easy access to these assets to help accelerate your migrations to Azure.
In addition to being able to launch DMA directly from the Tools menu in SSMS 18, you can also download and install DMA from the Download Center. After you start DMA, connect to your source SQL Server(s) and assess the databases that you intend to migrate to Azure. You can also select the “Migrate SQL Server to Azure” option to access comprehensive step-by-step tutorials that guide you through using DMS to migrate your database to Azure.
SMSS improvements:
- SSMS – Added logic to prompt the user to commit open transactions when “Change connection” is used.
In addition, we also have several bug fixes in the following areas:
- IntelliSense in SSMS editor
- SMO
- Azure SQL DB scripting
- Query data store
- Profiler
- Copy Database Wizard
For a full list of changes, please see the Release Notes.
If you have a previous version of SSMS 18.0 preview, you will need to uninstall it first. SSMS 18.0 Public Preview 6 can be installed side-by-side with SSMS 17.x for testing purposes. As a reminder, the use of pre-GA software in production environments is not supported.
We’d love to hear from you with any questions, comments, or feature suggestions.
