Microsoft"s recent improvements with regards to Azure include the acquisition of software company Movere to streamline customers" journey to the cloud, new cloud regions in Germany, and handwritten and mixed-mode support for Azure Forms Recognizer.
Today, the tech giant has announced availability of the September release of Azure Data Studio. For those unaware, the cross-platform data management tool enables working with SQL Server, Azure SQL DB and SQL DW.
In a condensed form, the improvements for this month include:
- Enabling SQL Server command line (SQLCMD) mode
- Community extension: Query Editor Boost
- Notebook improvements
- Visual Studio Code merge 1.38
- Bug fixes
Detailing a bit upon each of these, starting with the availability of the SQLCMD mode, this is a feature that enables the writing, editing, and executing of queries as SQLCMD scripts in the Query Editor. Moreover, the mode"s usability can be expanded with the release of the Schema Compare extension in Data Studio, allowing the outputting of SQLCMD scripts. This, as some users might have surmised, is quite useful when combined with the aforementioned capabilities.
Moving on, the Query Editor Boost extension can now be downloaded from the Azure Data Studio extensions marketplace. This enhances user experience in the standard query editor, adding the ability to generate custom snippets and templates, a shortcut to switch databases, and a new query template. You can learn more about it here.
Then, there are Notebook improvements, which essentially revolve around performance improvements and bug fixes. In addition to Notebook, the full list of bug fixes covered in this update can be checked here.
And finally, as part of the Visual Studio Code merges, the code editor has been updated from version 1.37 to 1.38. The changes this update brings including link protection for outgoing links, accessibility improvements, multi-line search in find, and more that you can read in the full changelog for the release.
To check out the additions this month, you can download the latest version of Azure Data Studio for Windows, macOS, and Linux from here. The full release notes for Azure Data Studio"s September update can be viewed here. You can also make feature requests, and report on any issues you encounter or consult the ones that users have already posted on the GitHub issues page.