Today, Microsoft announced a new standalone SQL Server Management Studio download
“This is our first effort to release SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) in a mechanism outside of the SQL Engine releases. Our goal is to update this frequently with new features, fixes and support for the newest SQL Server features in SQL Server Engine and Azure SQL Database.”
Microsoft might start shipping updates to SSMS outside of the regular SQL Server Service Pack scenario! This telegraphs a couple of interesting things: first, surely they have to do it because Azure SQL Database ships updates much faster than SQL Server does. So this gives Microsoft a way to enable those updates in SSMS without releasing a separate service pack.
This implies that SQL Server Management Studio is now considered The Way to Manage Azure SQL Database. There isn’t a separate tool coming, nor will designer/developer tools like Visual Studio become a management tool. That sounds good news.
