macOS

How to Install Oracle AI Database 26ai on a Mac (Using Docker)

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Oracle Database 26ai has officially landed. As of January 27, 2026, Oracle finally flipped the switch on the General Availability (GA) for the Linux x86-64 version, bringing the “Enterprise Edition” to data centers everywhere. This marks a major turning point in Oracle’s recent rebranding saga, where the anticipated “23ai” was bumped up to 26ai to signal its role as the long-term support (LTS) foundation for the AI era.

Oracle Database has been a powerhouse in enterprise environments for decades, and the new “AI” branding reflects their recent addition of AI-powered features like vector search.

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How to Install SQL Server on a Mac in 2026

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Running a full-featured Microsoft SQL Server on a Mac used to be a headache, but as of 2026, it is smoother than ever. Thanks to improvements in Docker Desktop and macOS’s Rosetta 2 translation, you can now run the enterprise-grade engine (including the new SQL Server 2025 Preview) directly on your M1, M2, M3, or M4 Mac.

This guide will walk you through setting up a modern SQL Server environment from scratch.

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Connect to Azure SQL Database from Your Mac

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If you’ve set up an Azure SQL Database, you’ll almost certainly want to connect to it at some point. You’ll probably want to connect to it, and then run a bunch of SQL queries, just like you would do if you had SQL Server installed locally or across the network.

Fortunately, connecting to Azure SQL Database is relatively straight forward. Let’s look at two options for connecting via a Mac: SQL command line tools and VS Code.

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How to Run SQL Server on your Mac with Azure SQL (for Free)

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If you’re a Mac developer, setting up SQL Server locally is probably starting to feel like more trouble than it’s worth. Between workarounds like Docker, virtual machines, and third-party tools, just getting a working SQL Server environment on macOS is not exactly your run-of-the-mill installation.

Add to that Microsoft’s announcement to retire SQL Edge in September 2025 (SQL Edge was our only hope of installing SQL Server on a Mac without using a virtual machine), not to mention the impending retirement of Azure Data Studio in Feb 2026 (which we could use to connect to SQL Server), and you may start to wonder whether you should drop the whole idea of using SQL Server altogether.

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Install SQL Server Command Line Tools on a Mac

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mssql-tools is a command-line utility developed by Microsoft that provides tools for interacting with Microsoft SQL Server environments. It includes sqlcmd for executing Transact-SQL (T-SQL) queries and scripts, and bcp (Bulk Copy Program) for importing and exporting large volumes of data. These tools can be useful when you want to manage SQL Server directly from the terminal without relying on graphical interfaces.

One cool thing about mssql-tools is that it’s cross-platform. It can be installed on macOS, Linux, and Windows machines. This makes it ideal for modern development environments, especially when working with cloud-based solutions like Azure SQL Database.

In this article, we’ll look at how to install mssql-tools on a Mac and use it to connect securely to an Azure SQL Database.

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Install MySQL on a Mac

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Below are the steps that I used to install MySQL on my M1 Mac via the Homebrew package manager.

As mentioned, this is an M1 Mac (which uses the ARM64 architecture) but that didn’t cause any issues. The current version (MySQL 8.0.26) supports the ARM architechure.

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Create a Linked Server Between Two Docker Containers running SQL Server (T-SQL Example)

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This article walks through the process of creating a linked server from a SQL Server instance on one Docker container, to a SQL Server instance on another Docker container. Both Docker containers are on the same machine.

The process is exactly the same that you would use to create any linked server (for example, even if the SQL Server instances were on separate machines and not running in a Docker container).

All examples here use Transact-SQL. This enables you to create the linked server without relying on a graphical user interface (such as SSMS).

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How to Run SQL Server 2017 & 2019 Simultaneously on a Mac

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As I write this, there are two releases of SQL Server that can be run on a Mac: SQL Server 2017 and SQL Server 2019 Preview. This article explains how to run both of these on a Mac so that they run simultaneously. No need to uninstall one before you install the other.

The key is to use a different TCP port number for each instance (the TCP port that the containers are mapped to on the host machine). If you don’t do this, you’ll get an error. SQL Server uses port 1433 by default, which is fine to use for one of your instances, but not both. Therefore you’ll need to change this for at least one of your installations.

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