

The main advantage of Azure Data Studio is its portability - while SSMS can work only on the Windows platform, ADS can run on Linux and macOS as well. So, my first impression is: Microsoft named this IDE quite misleading! Why calling it “ Azure Data Studio“, when connecting to Azure is just one of the options? You can also connect to the on-prem SQL Server database, as previously with SSMS, but you can also connect to Big Data Clusters (the latest feature of SQL Server, introduced in 2019 edition). However, after I heard Ben Weissman speaking at SQL Saturday Vienna this January when he explained that “Azure” word doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to use this tool in conjunction with Azure palette of products, I decided to give it a try.

When I heard the name of the new tool, I wasn’t planning to test it deeply, because the “Azure” part didn’t wake special interest in me. Short intro before I dive deeper into some cool features of the “new kid on the block”. Since Microsoft made Azure Data Studio generally available in September 2018 and investing heavily in this tool improvement in the meantime, it looks like good old SQL Server Management Studio is destined to go into (well-deserved) retirement…Īs a SQL Developer, who is writing queries on a day-to-day basis, I will try to give some observations based on what I discovered so far, with special emphasis on Azure Data Studio, since I believe that most of us are more than familiar with SSMS already. Question from the title already became extremely popular and it will become more and more as time passes by.
