SQL Server Management Studio 2016 gets its first monthly update in the July 2016 Release

SQL Server Management Studio, Microsoft’s software for managing SQL servers and Azure databases, is receiving its first monthly update. This update brings significant changes to the database management tool, and provides extensive support for Azure services.

Here is what’s new and improved:

Support for Azure SQL Data Warehouse in SSMS.

Significant updates to the SQL Server PowerShell module. This includes a new SQL PowerShell module and new CMDLETs for Always Encrypted, SQL Agent, and SQL Error Logs

Support for PowerShell script generation in the Always Encrypted wizard

Significantly improved connection times to Azure SQL databases

New ‘Backup to URL’ dialog to support the creation of Azure storage credentials for SQL Server 2016 database backups. This provides a more streamlined experience for storing database backups in an Azure storage account

New Restore dialog to streamline restoring a SQL Server 2016 database backup from the Microsoft Azure storage service. The dialog eliminates the need to memorize or save the Shared Access signature for an Azure storage account in order to restore a backup

Improved support for SQL Server 2016 (1200 compatibility level) tabular databases in the Analysis Services Process dialog

There’s also some fixes to resolve issues that have been found:

Bug fix in SSMS query designer to allow adding tables to the designer if a user doesn’t have SELECT permissions on them

Bug fix in PowerShell module to enable loading of ‘SQLAS’ extension

Bug fix in the SSMS editor window to allow drag-and-drop open of Sql files

Bug fix in Profiler to fix Profiler crash when exiting

Bug fix in SSMS to prevent crash when trying to edit a join link in the SSMS table designer

Bug fix in SSMS to enable database script generation for db_owner role members

Bug fix in SSMS editor to remove the delay in closing a query tab if the server has gone offline

Bug fix to enable Backup option in SQL Server Express databases

Bug fix to add IntelliSense support for ‘TRY_CAST()’, and ‘TRY_CONVERT()’ functions

Bug fix in Analysis Services to correctly show the Data Feed provider for multi-dimensional Analysis Services models.

Finally, there are some known issues to look out for:

SSMS can only connect to SQL Server 2016 Integrated Services (SSIS 2016) instances

SSMS won’t save maintenance plans for SQL Server 2008 R2 and earlier SQL Server versions

SQL Server Configuration Manager will fail to launch if there is no SQL Server installed on the client machine

This update is available now, and upon launching the program, a notification will pop-up informing you that an update is available. To download SQL Server Management Studio, head to the download page, where you will also find workarounds for a couple of the known issues.

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