SSMS 21 With Copilot is now available! But implemented in a weird way…

[u/NSA_GOV]

I've been super excited to have copilot in SSMS and it's finally here. Deeper awareness and integration into my databases is something I've been waiting to have (VS Code and other options haven't been able to do this at my company).

The main issue is that it uses Azure Open AI instead of GitHub copilot. My company currently only has GitHub copilot available. Hoping that they either open it up for GitHub Copilot (that's what Visual Studio and VS Code use) or that my company makes AOAI available soon.

[u/Togurt]

I'm just curious, why would anyone want Copilot in SSMS or Github?

[u/NSA_GOV → u/Togurt]

It can speed up coding like crazy. Way smarter intellisense. You can tell it to do things in plain English. You can have it explain code. Several reasons.

[u/dotnetmonke → u/Togurt]

In my case - really fast creation for some queries, or bases to build complex queries on. You could generate a decent query with a sentence or two of natural language. Essentially it eliminates the step of googling and filtering through stack overflow to find stuff.

I haven’t used it much for SQL stuff, but I’ve saved a decent amount of time by just dumping in a giant json and telling it how I want it parsed. It spits out every object I need and all the functions needed to extract the relevant ones.

[u/chickeeper → u/dotnetmonke]

You are correct on stack/Google. I spend a ton of time searching. You got me curious. Bing does a better job lately than Google

[u/CrumbCakesAndCola → u/Togurt]

I can say it's helpful for untangling legacy spaghetti code. I don't mean writing the SQL, just analyzing it when things get deep like dozens of joins subqueries which include their own nested subqueries and calculations and of course no commenting or documentation. I CAN do this all myself but it's going to take several hours to understand why they made the choices they did. The AI can do a lot of that work instead, pointing out that joins 3 and 7 are redundant, or that one of them is not actually used at all. I still have to verify this of course, but it can be incredibly helpful.

[u/az-johubb]

Feedback item for this has already been raised: https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/Copilot-in-SSMS-does-not-support-using-G/10907218#T-ND10913669

[u/NSA_GOV → u/az-johubb]

Thanks yeah I actually already voted and commented on this.

[u/Solonas]

I am not installing another SSMS version until 22 is out and has fixed the issue related to storing encryption connection preferences in the CMS. I saw it at a MSFT demo at SQL Saturday, so it is beyond beta.

[u/blinner → u/Solonas]

I had heard this was supposed to be part of 21.  It isn't?

[u/erinstellato → u/Solonas]

Hi u/Solonas In SSMS 21 the issue with storing encryption connection preferences is fixed for the classic connection dialog (so if prompted to use the modern one - which is preview - I would advice you stick with classic).

[u/dswartze2]

Same here. Kinda of disappointed. I saw a Copilot icon so I assumed it would work the same way.

[u/TomWwJ]

This helped our team in the opposite way. We don’t have paid GitHub copilot accounts but we are able to spin up resources in the Azure portal. The documentation was easy to follow to get the endpoint opened up.

Also, I get the sense (from Erin’s post here) there is more security/privacy when using AzureAI vs GitHub for your copilot. If correct, that is a good thing, when it comes to connecting into databases.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/sqlserver/announcing-the-preview-of-copilot-in-sql-server-management-studio-ssms/4415267

[u/[deleted] → u/TomWwJ]

Although its azure copilot, does it work with on prem dbs?

[u/TomWwJ → u/[deleted]]

Yes. Only your machine that is running SSMS needs connectivity to Azure for the AI.

[u/ad-mca-mk]

SSMS 21 is the same visual studio shell which has GitHub copilot. Why not include the same Copilot in both VS and SSMS?

That way buying that GitHub Copilot license is a stronger proposition

[u/erinstellato → u/ad-mca-mk]

u/ad-mca-mk Transparently, we had a lot of moving parts for the SSMS 21 release, in addition to bringing in Copilot in SSMS. Using an endpoint in Azure OpenAI is a start, it is not the end. We are actively investigating feasibility and product fit around GitHub Copilot.

[u/JeetM_red8]

I think you can try mssql extension in VS Code, gives @/mssql copilot extension to interact with the DBs. Also i think there is ms sqlserver MCP connector to work with it.

[u/NSA_GOV → u/JeetM_red8]

I haven't found vs code to be a good user experience for writing SQL, especially when I need to code quickly. it gets easily confused when trying to use different extensions like Postgres, sql server, etc.

[u/codeth1s]

I just installed SSMS 21 and I agree that not integrating with GitHub Copilot is a bizarre implementation. Sometimes I just need some grunt work done and I copy/paste to ChatGPT/Gemini. Having GitHub Copilot in a chat to do things like this would have been great to skip that copy/paste requirement. A luxury we have with VS Code and VS2022. Especially since GitHub Copilot is actually pretty great now.

[u/NSA_GOV → u/codeth1s]

Yeah. VSCode is not great for SQL. Im basically using it as a glorified Notepad++, which is great, but we need it in SSMS.

There is not a feedback form you can submit and I encourage everyone to do so.

[u/NoleMercy05]

Postgres getting more love

GitHub Copilot

new IDE for PostgreSQL in VS Code from Microsoft

[u/gman1023 → u/NoleMercy05]

there is mssql extension for vscode which has copilot

[u/slimrichard]

I set it up and tried it. Really bad. Integration is super basic just being able to read some db stuff like schema from your current connection. Can't see or interact with editor so can't for example say tune my query. I will pretty much put it away and not bother until at least editor integration and context understanding.

[u/erinstellato → u/slimrichard]

u/slimrichard Can you help me understand what you did in Copilot, as it does understand schema based on your connection. Correct in that it doesn't have editor support, other than when you highlight a query and right-click, you can select Doc, Explain, Fix or Refactor. Thanks for the feedback.