General SSMS has seen some useful additions, including the ability to add ‘Notebook’ as a destination for the Generate Scripts wizard and comma-separated lists from the SQL Assessment API. In addition, data classification has received support for sensitivity rank, and there have been two improvements to the Hyperscale side of things. For one, missing Azure additions are now present in Dac wizards, with specific support for Hyperscale. Users can also utilize ‘Import Data-Tier Application’ in SQL Azure Hyperscale”.
IS and AS Improvements
Microsoft emphasizes that these are only the most interesting changes, and the full release notes are indeed massive. However, it did take the time to highlight improvements in IS and AS: IS
“Support executing SSIS Package from file system in MI Agent Job. Made user-friendly improvements in configuring Azure-enabled DTExec to invoke SSIS package executions on Azure-SSIS Integration Runtime. Support connecting Azure-SSIS integration runtime and managing or executing SSIS packages in package stores. Support migrating on-premise SSIS agent jobs to ADF pipelines and triggers. Made an improvement for the user experience of exporting SSIS projects from SSISDB. Compared with the old Export, which loaded and upgraded packages in the SSIS project, the new version independent Export won’t load and upgrade packages in the SSIS project. Instead, it keeps packages in the projects as they are in SSISDB except changing protection level to EncryptSensitiveWithUserKey.
AS
Added support for PowerBI endpoint in AS, matching functionality of asazure. Profiler: added support for AS Trace Definition 15.1.”
On top of all this, there have been bug fixes and minor adjustments across all areas, from the Object Explorer and SQL Agent to Data classification and auditing. The company is now listening for feedback for its next version, which is likely to have an equally long wait given the current pandemic.
