In a strange announcement this week, Microsoft announced on the Feb 7th that the Azure Data Studio would be retired on the future date of February 6th. You still have until February next year until it becomes unsupported, but I found the bungled announcement of the end of the products life was somehow fitting for a product that never quite took off. Personally I’d used it a few times, never really saw a compelling reason to dig deeper when Management Studio(SSMS) mostly did what I wanted, and just assumed I wasn’t the target market and went back to doing what I always did. Seems I wasn’t alone.
Microsoft Azure Data Studio(ADS), originally launched as SQL Operations Studio in November 2017 and I can still remember my reaction when someone first pointed out that the acronym for that was SOS. In IT, everything is going to get shortened to an acronym sooner or later, so to release a product without realizing what it’s acronym is likely to be showed….a certain lack of planning. Maybe we should have seen the writing on the wall.
Initially focusing on SQL Server database management, the software aimed to offer a modern, user-friendly interface, emphasizing usability and collaboration in data environments. By April 2018, Microsoft rebranded SQL Operations Studio to Azure Data Studio, maybe aligning it with it’s cloud platform, but probably just acknowledging that the original name was badly thought out. This rebranding highlighted its capability to specialize in cloud-based data operations while also supporting on-premises environments. The product was designed as a lightweight, cross-platform tool available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, providing flexibility for developers working in diverse ecosystems. The multi-platform support is something that SSMS can’t boast, but I’m a windows user, my clients are windows users and it was never functionality that those around me had needed. It also offered themes which some people who aren’t me care about and seems to be a problem too hard for SSMS to crack.
One of the touted features of Azure Data Studio was that it allowed users to integrate various extensions. This capability enables the customization of the environment to meet specific workflow requirements. Notably, Microsoft had included extensions for popular programming languages like Python and R, facilitating data science-centric workflows. The tool also supported Jupyter notebooks, boosting its appeal within data analysis and machine learning communities. And all that sounds nice until you tried to use it the same way you would use…say Visual Studio Code, and quickly realized that the extension model was heavily curated by what Microsoft was offering you. VSCode by comparison has a huge library of extensions with a fairly straightforward pathway to create your own.
So, without really seeing a great benefit for me, I continued using SSMS, so was disappointed when I found that ADS didn’t want to be ignored. If you installed SSMS you got ADS anyway. This is great fun to explain to clients when you are installing it into their environments. “You said you wanted to install SSMS, why are you installing this other stuff?”
Apart from me never really seeing the point, ADS also faced other criticisms from people who were using it. One recurring complaint was its performance issues when handling large datasets compared to SSMS. Users reported lag and responsiveness challenges, particularly when executing complex queries or managing big data environments.
So the announcement comes as a bit of a surprise to me, but is not likely to make a change to the way I do things. I guess some of the functionality that has been pushed into extensions for ADS(such as Azure migration assessments) will need to be rethought and repackaged over the next year, but overall I think it’s best for Microsoft to focus in on SSMS as it’s primary tool for SQL Database management. Version 21 apparently gives themes to people who feel that’s important, and also has copilot functionality.