Announcing SQL Server Management Studio – June 2015 Release

With the release of SQL Server 2016 Community Technology Preview (CTP) 2.1, customers can for the first time experience the rapid preview model for their on-premises SQL Server 2016 development and test environments and can gain a faster time to production.

 

In addition, we are delighted to announce our first "preview" release of SQL Server Management Studio! This is our first effort to release SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) in a mechanism outside of the SQL Engine releases. Our goal is to update this frequently with new features, fixes and support for the newest SQL Server features in SQL Server Engine and Azure SQL Database.

 

We invite you to download and install SQL Server Management Studio June 2015 Preview from here 

This preview release supports the latest capabilities available in Azure SQL Database and SQL Server 2016 and includes several bug fixes and customer requested features. And as you would expect, you can also use this preview release to work with previous versions of SQL Server. 

New Features 

  1. New lightweight Web Installer 
    We hope that the new SSMS installer is lightweight, fast and better experience for you to get SSMS tools. In particular, if you have already installed certain dependencies (say, .net framework), then the installer will not have to download them. In particular, as we release frequent updates to the tools, the installer should just update the components that have changed. 

 

  1. Automatic Check for Updates
    SSMS will now check online for updates. If an update is available, you will be notified via a toast notification in SSMS. Alternatively, you can manually click on "Tools|Check For Updates..." to see if there are updates available.

  1. Top customer requests addressed 
  • ‘Edit Top 200 Rows’ is now enabled for tables and views in Object Explorer

  • Table Designer is now enabled for Azure SQL Database V12

  • Database and Table property dialogs are now enabled for Azure SQL Database V12

  1. New option to skip prompt to save T-SQL files
    We have added a new option under "Tools|Options|Query Execution|SQL Server" to control if a prompt is shown for unsaved T-SQL files. 

  1. Updated Import/Export wizards with support for the new Azure SQL Database service tiers (Basic, Standard, Premium)

  2. Bug fixes to provide enhanced support for Azure SQL Database 

  • Numerous bug fixes for scripting scenarios 

  • Fixed bug when enabling change tracking for Azure SQL Database V12

We would be delighted to hear from you. Please ask us questions and submit your feedback on the SQL Client Tools Forum and on Microsoft Connect