Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 18, which can be used to manage any SQL infrastructure, has been released and is now generally available to users with a long list of updates and improvements.

In November, Microsoft released version 18.4 for the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), introducing some key features such as support for materialized view scripts in SQL Data Warehouse.

Microsoft SQL Operations Studio (source: Microsoft). As for more of that VS Code goodness, Microsoft said "You'll be able to leverage your favorite command line tools like Bash, PowerShell, sqlcmd, ...

The tool's Always Encrypted functionality was also improved, as described in another post published by Microsoft yesterday titled "Always Encrypted Assessment in SQL Server Management Studio 21." ...

SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is the principal interface for working with Microsoft SQL Server. However, many subtleties of this powerful tool evade even the most seasoned professionals ...

Microsoft has announced AI features in SQL Server 2025 and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) (more on that later). Microsoft has added support for both cloud-based and locally hosted AI models.