Software Update: SQL Server Management Studio 18.3.1

Microsoft has released version 18.3.1 of SQL Server Management Studio, often abbreviated to SSMS. With SSMS you can manage a Microsoft SQL environment, for example an on-premise SQL Server, but also an Azure SQL Data Warehouse in the cloud. It provides tools for the configuration, monitoring and commissioning of the various data tier components. You can also put together queries and scripts. The corresponding announcement looks like this:

What’s new in 18.3.1

• Data Classification – Add Data Classification information to column properties UI (Information Type, Information Type ID, Sensitivity Label, and Sensitivity Label ID are not exposed in the SSMS UI).
• Intellisense/Editor – Updated support for features recently added to SQL Server 2019 (for example, “ALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION”).
• Integration Services – Add a new selection menu item Tools > Migrate to Azure > Configure Azure-enabled DTExec that will invoke SSIS package executions on Azure-SSIS Integration Runtime as Execute SSIS Package activities in ADF pipelines.
• SMO/Scripting – Added support for Support scripting of Azure SQL DW unique constraint.
• SMO/Scripting – Data Classification
  • Added support for SQL version 10 (SQL 2008) and higher.
  • Added new sensitivity attribute ‘rank’ for SQL version 15 (SQL 2019) and higher and Azure SQL DB.
• SMO/Scripting – SQL Assessment API – Added versioning to ruleset format.
• SMO/Scripting – SQL Assessment API – Added new checks.
• SMO/Scripting – SQL Assessment API – Added support for Azure SQL Database Managed Instance.
• SMO/Scripting – SQL Assessment API – Updated default view of cmdlets to display results as a table.

Bug fixes in 18.3.1

• Analysis Services – Fix scaling issue in MDX Query Editor.
• Analysis Services – Fixed an issue in XEvent UI that prevents the users from being able to create a new session.
• Database Deployment to SQL Azure – Fixed an issue (in DacFx) which was causing this feature not to work.
• General SSMS – Fixed an issue, which was causing SSMS to crash when using the sorting feature in the XEvent viewer.
• General SSMS – Fixed long outstanding issues where SSMS Restore database may hang indefinitely.
• See UserVoice items for more details: Restore Database – Select Backup Devices Slow to Load.
  SSMS 2016 very slow in the database restore dialogs.
  Database restoring is slow.
  Restore Database from Device HANGS on clicking “…”.
• General SSMS – Fixed an issue where the default language for all logins was shown as Arabic.
• See UserVoice item for more details: SSMS 18.2 default language display bug.
• General SSMS – Fixed the hard to see the dialog for Query Options (when the user right-clicks on the T-SQL editor window) by making it resizable.
• General SSMS – The Completion time message visible in the Result Grid/File (introduced in SSMS 18.2) is now configurable under Tools > Options > Query Execution > SQL Server > Advanced > Show completion time.
• General SSMS – In the connection dialog, replaced Active Directory – Password and Active Directory – Integrated with Azure Active Directory – Password and Azure Active Directory – Integrated, respectively.
• General SSMS – Fixed an issue that prevents users from being able to use SSMS to configure auditing on SQL Azure-Managed Instances when located in a TZ with negative UTC offset.
• General SSMS – Fixing an issue in XEvent UI where hovering over the grid was causing rows to be selected.
• See UserVoice item for more details: SSMS Extended Events UI Selects Actions on Hover.
• Import flat file – Fixed the issue where Import Flat File was not importing all data by letting the user choose between a simple or rich data type detection.
• See UserVoice item for more details: SSMS Import Flat File fails to import all data.
• Integration Services – Add new operation type StartNonCatalogExecution for SSIS Operation report.
• Integration Services – Fixed an issue in the Azure Data Factory pipelines generated by Azure-enabled DTExec utility to use the correct parameter type. (explicit for 18.3.1)
• SMO/Scripting – Fixed an issue, which was causing SMO to throw errors when fetching properties when SMO.Server.SetDefaultInitFields(true) was being used.
• Query Store UI – Fixed an issue where the Y-axis did not scales when Execution Count Metric was selected in Tracked Query View.
• Vulnerability Assessment – Disabled clearing and approving baseline for Azure SQL DBs.

Known issues (18.3.1)

• Database Diagram created from SSMS running on machine A cannot be modified from machine B (SSMS crashes).
• There are redraw issues when switching between multiple query windows. See UserVoice for more details. A workaround for this issue is to disable hardware acceleration under Tools > Options.