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Applies to: 
Azure SQL Managed Instance
This article summarizes the documentation changes associated with new features and improvements in the recent releases of Azure SQL Managed Instance. To learn more about Azure SQL Managed Instance, see What is Azure SQL Managed Instance?.
Note
Microsoft Entra ID was previously known as Azure Active Directory (Azure AD).
Preview
The following table lists the features of Azure SQL Managed Instance that are currently in preview.
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Approximate or fuzzy string matching | Check if two strings are similar, and calculate the difference between two strings. Use this capability to identify strings that might be different because of character corruption. |
| DATEADD number allows bigint | For DATEADD (datepart, number, date), number can be expressed as a bigint. |
| Modernization Advisor | Use the Modernization Advisor in the Azure portal to help you determine if migrating to Azure SQL Managed Instance from a SQL Server VM saves you money or optimizes performance. |
| Service Broker | Support for cross-instance message exchange using Service Broker between instances of Azure SQL Managed Instance, and between SQL Server and Azure SQL Managed Instance. |
General availability (GA)
The following table lists features of Azure SQL Managed Instance that have been made generally available (GA) within the last 12 months:
| Feature | GA Month | Details |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Server 2025 update policy | March 2026 | Align your SQL managed instance database format with the SQL Server 2025 database engine. |
| Regular expression functions | November 2025 | Regular expression (REGEX) functions return text based on values in a search pattern. |
| Optimized locking | July 2025 | Azure SQL Managed Instance with the SQL Server 2025 update policy now has optimized locking enabled for all user databases. |
| UNISTR (Transact-SQL) | July 2025 | Azure SQL Managed Instance now supports the UNISTR T-SQL syntax for Unicode string literals. |
| || (String concatenation) and ||= (Compound assignment) syntax support | July 2025 | Azure SQL Managed Instance now supports || (String concatenation) and ||= (Compound assignment) Transact-SQL syntax. |
| Zone redundancy for General Purpose | June 2025 | Deploy your General Purpose SQL Managed Instance to multiple availability zones to improve the availability of your instance in the event of a disaster. |
| Invoke an HTTPS REST endpoint SP | June 2025 | Use the sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint stored procedure to invoke an HTTPS REST endpoint provided as an input argument to the procedure. |
| TLS 1.3 support for replication | May 2025 | Configure Azure SQL Managed Instance replication agents to use TLS 1.3. |
| JSON native data type | May 2025 | The json data type provides new capabilities for handling semistructured data in Azure SQL Managed Instance. |
| JSON aggregate functions | May 2025 | Two json aggregate functions (JSON_OBJECTAGG and JSON_ARRAYAGG) enable construction of JSON objects or arrays based on an aggregate from SQL data. |
| MI link from SQL Server 2017 | March 2025 | Configure a link from SQL Server 2017 to Azure SQL Managed Instance. |
Documentation changes
Learn about significant changes to the Azure SQL Managed Instance documentation. For previous years, see the What's new archive.
March 2026
| Changes | Details |
|---|---|
| SQL Server 2025 update policy GA | Align your SQL managed instance database format with the SQL Server 2025 database engine. This update policy is now generally available. For more information, review SQL Server 2025 update policy. |
December 2025
| Changes | Details |
|---|---|
| Traffic management | Learn about how network traffic is managed in Azure SQL Managed Instance, including user-managed and service-managed traffic. Review Traffic management overview to learn more. |
November 2025
| Changes | Details |
|---|---|
| Regular expression functions preview | Regular expression (REGEX) functions return text based on values in a search pattern. Regular expression (REGEX) functions are now generally available for Azure SQL Managed Instance. For more information, see Regular expressions or General Availability Announcement: Regex Support in SQL Server 2025 & Azure SQL. |
October 2025
| Changes | Details |
|---|---|
| Redirect connection type default | The redirect connection type is now default for all new and existing instances. The redirect connection type has better latency and throughput performance compared to the legacy proxy connection type. SQL managed instances with the proxyOverride value set to Default before October 2025 are converted to the legacy Proxy connection type, which you can change to Redirect manually using the Azure portal or PowerShell. |
September 2025
| Changes | Details |
|---|---|
| New Azure SQL hub | Choosing the right Azure SQL service can be challenging. To make this easier, we built the Azure SQL hub, a new home for everything related to Azure SQL in the Azure portal. |
| SQL Server 2025 update policy preview | Align your SQL managed instance database format with the SQL Server 2025 database engine. This capability is now in preview. To learn more, review SQL Server 2025 update policy. |
Archive
For previous news, see the What's new archive.
Known issues
The known issues content has moved to a dedicated known issues in SQL Managed Instance article.