Introduction
On July 22, 2020, Microsoft’s Drew Skwiers-Koballa announced that SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 18.6 had been released. You can download SSMS 18.6 here.
SSMS 18.6 Released
SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is Build number 15.0.18338.0. Like all recent 18.x releases, it is a single download that can be used for a fresh SSMS 18.6 installation. It can also upgrade any previous 18.x GA version to SSMS 18.6.
There are improvements for Analysis Services, Auditing, Data Classification, and SMO/Scripting. The Import Flat File Wizard has also been improved. There are also numerous bug fixes.
The full release notes are here.
SSMS Release Cadence
SQL Server Management Studio has been on a somewhat erratic release cycle over the past eighteen months. According to the guidance in the release post, this should be improving in the future. This is a welcome development!
| SSMS Version | Release Date |
| 18.6 | Jul 22, 2020 |
| 18.5.1 | Jun 9, 2020 |
| 18.5 | Apr 7, 2020 |
| 18.4 | Nov 4, 2019 |
| 18.3.1 | Oct 2, 2019 |
| 18.2 | Jul 25, 2019 |
| 18.1 | Jun 11, 2019 |
| 18.0 | Apr 24, 2019 |
| 17.9.1 | Nov 21, 2018 |
“Regular updates to SQL Server Management Studio will continue to be released on an approximately bi-monthly cadence and your feedback is an integral part of our planning.”
Drew Skwiers-Koballa
Final Words
Despite all the attention (and regular monthly releases) that Azure Data Studio (ADS) gets, SSMS is a very useful tool that is still better than ADS for pure database administration work. I am very happy to see SSMS getting a little more attention from Microsoft.
If you have any suggestions for SSMS, Microsoft is openly soliciting feedback on SSMS on User Voice for SQL Server.
If you have any questions about this post, please ask me here in the comments or on Twitter. I am pretty active on Twitter as GlennAlanBerry. Thanks for reading!