Modern applications demand more from databases—scale, availability, and integration with AI. In this keynote, we’ll take a hands-on look at how Microsoft databases are evolving, focusing on real application architecture and real code.

We’ll explore Azure SQL Hyperscale, showing how familiar SQL Server concepts map to cloud native designs such as independent compute and storage scaling, read scale out, and in database AI. Examples use T SQL, application code, and VS Code workflows with GitHub Copilot to build AI patterns like vector search and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) using Microsoft Foundry. We’ll also look ahead at Azure HorizonDB and how the same principles apply to PostgreSQL based applications. This keynote emphasizes detailed code walkthroughs and real implementation patterns.