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Applies to: 
SQL Server 2025 (17.x)
This article describes requirements, and limitations for SQL Server 2025 (17.x).
Upgrade
This release of SQL Server 2025 (17.x) supports upgrading from previous versions of SQL Server. The operating system environment must meet the requirements in Hardware and software requirements for SQL Server 2025.
Preview features
Explore preview development features with the new PREVIEW_FEATURES database scoped configuration. This configuration lets you try select features in preview even after SQL Server reaches general availability. These features will become generally available in future cumulative updates. When a cumulative update provides general availability for a feature, the database-scoped configuration is no longer necessary for that feature.
To use these features, enable the PREVIEW_FEATURES database scoped configuration.
The following table identifies features originally released as preview and their current status:
| Feature | Current status | Version of latest update | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Change event streaming | Preview | RTM | Stream changes from SQL Server to Azure Event Hubs. |
| Fuzzy string matching | Preview | RTM | Check if two strings are similar, and calculate the difference between two strings. |
| EDIT_DISTANCE | Preview | RTM | Calculate the number of insertions, deletions, substitutions, and transpositions needed to transform one string to another. |
| EDIT_DISTANCE_SIMILARITY | Preview | RTM | Calculate a similarity value ranging from 0 (indicating no match) to 100 (indicating full match). |
| Half-precision (2-byte) vectors | Preview | RTM | Store vectors using half-precision (2-byte) floating-point values, allowing up to 3996 dimensions in a single vector. |
| JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE | Preview | RTM | Calculate the edit distance between two strings giving preference to strings that match from the beginning for a set prefix length. |
| JARO_WINKLER_SIMILARITY | Preview | RTM | Calculate a similarity value ranging from 0 (indicating no match) to 100 (indicating full match). |
| Vector index | Preview | RTM | Create and manage approximate vector indexes to find similar vectors to a given reference vector. |
| CREATE VECTOR INDEX | Preview | RTM | Create an approximate index on a vector column to improve performances of nearest neighbors search. |
| VECTOR_SEARCH. | Preview | RTM | Search for vectors similar to a given query vectors using an approximate nearest neighbors vector search algorithm. |
Caution
Preview features aren't recommended for production environments.
The status of all other features described in the What's new in SQL Server 2025 article is aligned with the release status of SQL Server 2025 (17.x). They don't require enabling the preview feature database scoped configuration.
For more information, review Opt in for preview features - FAQ.
Breaking changes
SQL Server 2025 (17.x) introduces breaking changes to a few Database Engine features. To learn more, review Breaking changes to Database Engine features in SQL Server 2025.
Build number
| Build | Version number | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Generally available (GA) | 17.0.1000.7 | November 18, 2025 |