This post is part of the blog series created primarily for database engineers, with the hope that it might help you get a head start on your development tasks. With that being said, let us dive in...

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Azure Data Studio's latest version 1.44 has been released on May 24, 2023. I received an update notification about it this morning. This page has release notes and the download link.

One of the highlights is related to SQL Authentication Provider - which impacts the process of authenticating users using Active Directory-based authentication.

Azure Data Studio 1.44 and later defaults to use the SQL Authentication Provider for Azure SQL connections and the Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL). This provider is used with Active Directory Interactive authentication mode and enables server-side resource endpoint integration when fetching access tokens.

With the Sql Authentication Provider, the selection of a tenant is no longer required. The Azure AD tenant list box has been removed from the Connection dialog because it's now handled by the underlying driver. This change also allows for an improved token refresh for Azure SQL Database connections.

Although it is not explicitly highlighted in the release notes, the Azure AD-based authentication was not at all working with the earlier version of Azure Data Studio installed on MacBook. However, with this new version that issue has been resolved and I could successfully connect to the database through Azure AD-based authentication.

What we had to do with the earlier version of Azure Data Studio on MacBook, was to login to Citrix Windows virtual desktop, install Azure Data Studio on that virtual desktop and connect from there using Azure AD-based authentication (and that worked). Thanks to the product team for fixing this and for the other improvements!

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In the series of posts titled "Azure SQL Database query ideas", I will cover some of the topics that I usually encounter as part of my projects.