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Get the latest information, insights, and news from Microsoft.
Highlights
.NET Conf 2026 - Save the Date
Azure DevOps in the GitHub Copilot App
Agent Harness: Making your claw production-ready
Latest posts
SQL Decomposition in a Nutshell
Good software design principles apply inside the database too. See how decomposition, encapsulation, statelessness, and clear contracts can make complex T-SQL easier to read, test, reuse, and maintain.
Advocating for Uptime: The 6 Phases of Change
Schema changes are inevitable, but downtime doesn’t have to be. Learn a phased approach to safely evolve a production SQL schema while applications remain online.
Test what you ship: MSTest and Native AOT
MSTest source generation lets test projects use the same Native AOT and trimming deployment model as the applications they validate, while reducing reflection on the test execution path.
The case of the progress callback that never got called when progress happened
Are you talking to the right guy?
Go 1.27.1-1 and 1.26.8-1 Microsoft builds now available
A new release of the Microsoft build of Go is now available for download.
Stop alt-tabbing into the wrong Visual Studio
A user asked for per-solution color themes. It already ships, and it goes further than they asked. You run several instances of Visual Studio side by side, one per solution, and they all look identical. Same taskbar icon, same alt-tab thumbnail, same chrome. So, you land in the wrong one, start typing, and realize thirty seconds later you just edited the wrong repo. Could each solution get its own color theme? It can. It already does. And the way it works turns out to be more useful than a personal color preference. How to do it This uses the new settings experience introduced in Visua...
The perils of binding to value types in XAML
Loss of identity.
Behind SPFx Dev Skills: testing what agents know and fixing what they miss
How much guidance does an AI coding agent actually need? See how we used evaluation data to target SPFx knowledge gaps, improving results without wasting tokens on what models already know.
Servicing While In Use and ERROR_PACKAGES_IN_USE
How does MSIX service a package while it's in use? Simple: It doesn't. A core principle of MSIX servicing is: Do not service a package while it's in use. Deployment provides several ways to deal with that constraint. Options range from terminating applications to deferring servicing until the package is no longer in use. How hard can it be? 'Servicing a package' means any deployment activity modifying software, including update, remove, repair and other operations. Altering installed software can be highly disruptive if the software is in use. Executables and DLLs may be mapped into running processes. File...
Today I will… review GitHub PRs
Today I will show you how we can tackle one of the most common tasks when working in a development team or managing an open-source project, and that is working with Pull Requests. While we're going to be using the GitHub tooling within Visual Studio for this, the approach would be very similar with Azure DevOps. Getting our PRs Start by opening the pull requests for your repository. Select Git → GitHub → View Pull Requests. You can also search for the command in the Command Palette with Ctrl+Shift+P. From here, Visual Studio will load all the PRs in the repo and group them to the ones that are assigned to m...
Microspeak: Funded / unfunded
People are our most valuable asset.
Enterprise Live Migrations is now in public preview
Move Azure DevOps repositories to GitHub Enterprise Cloud with data residency while minimizing disruption Over the last several years, we’ve encouraged customers to move their repositories from Azure Repos to GitHub to take advantage of the latest AI-powered and agentic development experiences. We know that making this move at enterprise scale isn’t always straightforward. Critical repositories can’t simply be taken offline for days, and large migrations often require complex coordination and extended development freezes. ELM is designed to make these migrations more predictable, with minimal disruption to deve...
Power Azure SRE Agent with the tools it needs
Use Azure Connector Namespace to host MCP servers and give Azure SRE Agent access to the operational tools it needs without managing the server infrastructure yourself.
Bacpac and Dacpac, the similarities and differences
When you need to move an entire database or move the objects in a database, bacpac and dacpac files often come up because of all of the tooling options to interact with them. Bacpac and dacpac files share some core similarities as well as some major differences in how they're used in SqlPackage and other SQL tools, but their flexibility can create a bit of confusion. In this post, we are going to discuss exactly what makes bacpac specifically important, as well as explore the options that a dacpac is capable of. A bacpac is primarily a portable copy of schema and data whose model is limited to the Azure SQL Data...
AWE does not require PAE, though PAE makes it much more useful
All dressed up with nowhere to go.
Only believe what you can validate: a verification framework for agentic AI
How to read this article This article picks up where my January piece left off. My catch phrase is still the same: "only believe what you can validate". This article is about validation. If you are new to agentic AI (in modernization contexts), I would highly recommend reading The Realities of Application Modernization with Agentic AI first. Start there, then come back. The problem with "looks good to me" I have had a version of the same conversation many times over the last months. I work with a customer on an agentic application modernization. In this concrete example we are facing one of 150 COBOL module...
Try the new SqlClient and Retry connections natively
Microsoft.Data.SqlClient includes configurable retry logic for SqlConnection and SqlCommand, giving .NET applications built-in resilience for transient SQL Server failures without requiring Polly.
On forcing all derived classes to implement a specific non-virtual method, part 2
Explicitly denying that you implement the method.
SharePoint Framework (SPFx) roadmap update – August 2026
SPFx 1.24 Beta 3 is now available, React 18 support is coming in 1.24, and a new Copilot Components preview program opens for customers and partners.
Azure Developer CLI (azd) – August 2026
Welcome to the August 2026 edition of the Azure Developer CLI () release blog. This post covers releases 1.30.0, 1.31.0, 1.31.1, 1.31.2, and 1.32.0. To share your feedback and questions, join the August release discussion on GitHub. Highlights: New features 🔌 Extensions The extension framework reached general availability this month. Read more in The Azure Developer CLI extension framework is generally available. 📦 Container deployment Breaking changes 🪲 Bugs fixed Provisioning and deployment Pipelines and update...
How Uno Platform uses .NET, MCP, and AI to build high quality apps
How Uno Platform built two Model Context Protocol servers in C# so AI agents can ground themselves in real documentation and then see and drive a running cross-platform .NET app.
Agent Harness: Making your claw production-ready
Part 4 of Build your own claw and agent harness with Microsoft Agent Framework. Over the last three parts our personal finance assistant grew from a single tool into a genuinely capable agent: it plans, reads your portfolio, asks before it trades, remembers what matters, loads skills on demand, reorganizes files with a shell, computes with CodeAct, and fans research out to background agents. It works on your machine. But "works on my machine" isn't the same as ready to run for other people. This final part closes that gap along four axes: To get there we make one structural change. Up t...
VSLive! @ Microsoft HQ: Developer Takeaways and Must-Watch Sessions
VSLive! @ Microsoft HQ 2026 was one of the most energizing VSLive! events I’ve attended. What stood out was the level of engagement over five days of learning and conversation from July 27 through July 31. Developers came ready to dig into the future of Visual Studio, .NET, and AI-assisted software development, and many Microsoft engineers and product managers were there to have those conversations directly. If you weren’t able to join us in Redmond, there’s still plenty you can take away from the event. The Microsoft-led sessions were recorded, so you can catch up on many of the topics that generated som...
On forcing all derived classes to implement a specific non-virtual method, part 1
Don't implement a stub. Just don't implement it at all.
Azure DevOps in the GitHub Copilot App
The Azure DevOps plugin is now available for the GitHub Copilot app, allowing you to view and manage Azure DevOps pull requests and work items directly in the Copilot app. What you can do The initial release supports: You can find your assigned work, make changes, and complete pull requests without leaving the GitHub Copilot app. Get started Open the GitHub Copilot app and select Customize. From the Editor's picks tab, find and install the Azure DevOps plugin. Once the plugin is installed, start a new session from chat or select New session from the plugin card under Editor's picks. Sign in and ent...
I Need My CI/CD Pipeline to Access Cosmos DB Without Using a Secret
In the last post we walked through why RBAC broke your app and how to fix it. Your app is now running on a managed identity, keys are off, and everything is green. Then your build pipeline runs, and it needs to seed test data. Suddenly you're staring at a secret in your CI settings and wondering if you just undid all that work. As we continue this security series, let's get your pipeline to Cosmos DB with no secret anywhere. The situation You did the hard part. Your app uses , you assigned a data plane role, and you set . Passwordless, done. Then you look at your CI/CD pipeline and find this sitting in yo...
The Visual Studio Debugger Agentic Workflow Gets a Test-Driven Upgrade
A few months ago, we introduced a new guided agentic workflow in the Visual Studio Debugger Agent designed to help you move from a bug report to a verified fix without spending your morning guessing where to begin. If you missed that announcement, check out Stop Hunting Bugs: Meet the New Visual Studio Debugger Agent to see how the Agent builds a hypothesis, guides the debugger, investigates your application at runtime, and validates the final change. Today, we’re building on that experience with a new Test-Driven Investigation workflow. The Debugger Agent can now create or identify a focused test, debug th...
Introducing agent and workflow channels
An agent or workflow is only useful when people and other systems can reach it through the interfaces and channels they already use. That might be an OpenAI Responses client, Telegram, another agent using A2A, or an MCP client. As a builder of agents and workflow, you need control over which channels you expose it to and how it behaves. To help, we're introducing channels in Microsoft Agent Framework for agents and workflows in Python. Choose the channels your application needs The new packages are organized around a small shared hosting core and a set of channel-specific integrations: ...
Copilot Code Reviews for Azure Repos (public preview)
Today, we’re announcing the public preview of GitHub Copilot Code Review for Azure Repos, making the feature available to all Azure DevOps customers using the service. There’s no longer a need to sign up for early access. Customers can now enable Copilot Code Review for their Azure Repos repositories and start using it. With the public preview, we’re also introducing several improvements we’ve made over the past couple of months based on what we’ve learned during the technical preview. Before getting started, be sure to read the official documentation for details on how Copilot Code Review works, how to enable ...
In the product end game, every change carries significant risk, episode 2
The smallest perturbation.
.NET Conf 2026 – Save the Date
.NET Conf returns November 10-12, 2026, with three days of sessions, community, and the launch of .NET 11.
What Kind of Packaged Process Is It?
As previously discussed, we can divide processes into the two broad categories of packaged vs unpackaged, based on if the process HAS or LACKS package identity. Packaged processes can be divided into three broad categories: All three have package identity, but they make different tradeoffs between compatibility and modern packaged behavior. RuntimeBehavior Packages specify how an application process is created and runs via multiple properties in . The RuntimeBehavior attribute clearly expresses this: is a Universal app. It was first introduced in Windows 81. New lingo appeared with it, initially ref...
Start here: Azure SQL Foundations series
Most developers I talk to aren't asking whether Azure SQL Database can handle their next app. They're asking where to start when it comes to modernization, migration, and AI in the database. If you're reading this, you're probably in a similar boat: you've got an existing schema or databases, a scaling question you haven't had to answer yet, and a growing list of AI features you're expected to have an opinion about. That's why we built the path we kept describing in calls, with customers, and in the community. The Azure SQL Database Foundations series are four videos that take you from your first Hyperscal...
Visual Studio August Update — Work Smarter Across Models and Branches
Tune Copilot model thinking effort, share custom agents across your organization, track usage, and simplify complex Git workflows with worktrees and submodule support.
Try Azure SRE Agent with no always-on charges
We are happy to announce a 30-day trial experience for Azure SRE Agent. New customers can create and configure the SRE Agent at their own pace, with no charges for setup time or keeping agents ready. During the trial, you can connect your agents to telemetry, source code, incident management platforms, and other operational tools, and pay only for the Azure Agent Units (AAUs) consumed when your agents perform work. We are also excited to share the GA of Azure SRE Agent VNet integration and the Public Preview of Live Reports. With VNet support, the agent operates under your existing network controls, so it can ...
Why didn’t the Windows Entertainment Pack just run the MS-DOS version inside an emulator?
It wouldn't be a <I>Windows</I> Entertainment Pack then, would it?
PowerToys 0.101 is here: Window Hopper, Insider updates, and Command Palette compact mode
We're back with a fresh PowerToys release! PowerToys 0.101 introduces Window Hopper for quickly moving between windows from the same app, a redesigned update experience with Stable and Insider channels, and compact mode for Command Palette. This release also continues our WinUI 3 modernization, brings on-device Phi Silica transformations to Advanced Paste, and adds a big set of improvements across PowerDisplay and Shortcut Guide. Grab the update by checking for updates in PowerToys or by heading to the release page. Let's dive in! 🪟 Meet Window Hopper If you regularly have several windows open from the same a...
Unlocking the Power of AI for Every Developer in Visual Studio with Bring your Own Model
The best AI in Visual Studio is the AI you can bring with you. Developers don't work in a single-model world anymore. You might reach for one model for everyday coding, another for a domain-specific problem, and an approved model for work that must stay within your organization's governance boundaries. So, the question we hear most often isn't which model is best. It's, can I use mine? We're bringing Bring Your Own Model (BYOM) in Preview to Visual Studio, making it available and enabled by default across Community, Professional, and Enterprise SKUs. This Preview focuses on the developer experience available t...
Java OpenJDK August 2026 Critical Patch Update
Hello Java customers! We are happy to announce the latest August 2026 critical patch update release for the Microsoft Build of OpenJDK. Check our release notes page for details on fixes and enhancements or download and install the binaries today. The source code of our builds are now available on GitHub for further inspection: Microsoft Build of OpenJDK specific updates OpenJDK 25 OpenJDK 21 OpenJDK 17 OpenJDK 11 Summary of Upstream Updates OpenJDK Vulnerability Advisory August 2026 OpenJDK 25 OpenJDK 21 OpenJDK 17 ...
From dotnet run to Foundry Hosted Agent in 3 lines of C#
You built an agent with Microsoft Agent Framework and it works great on your machine. Now what? Turns out deploying it to production takes 1 NuGet package, 3 lines of C#, and 2 commands. Let's do it.
Explore new features available in C# 15 preview
C# 15 ships with .NET 11. It adds union types, closed hierarchies, a preview of the updated unsafe model, and a few smaller changes that remove everyday ceremony.
Powering Memory in Foundry Agent Service, with Azure Cosmos DB
Move from a locally composed memory-enabled agent to a deployed Foundry Agent Service agent, with keyless Azure infrastructure and an interactive browser sample. In Native Agent Memory for Microsoft Agent Framework, Powered by Azure Cosmos DB, we introduced : a Microsoft Agent Framework context provider that extracts useful information from conversations, stores it in Azure Cosmos DB, and retrieves it before later agent runs. That article used a locally composed Agent Framework agent and . It was a useful way to isolate the memory concepts: one provider, two lifecycle hooks, and a stable u...
Comparing the two holograms on the Windows 95 box
Filling in with your imagination.
Today I will… Modernize a .NET application
Today I will modernize a .NET Framework application to .NET 10 using the GitHub Copilot modernization tooling built-in to Visual Studio. The tooling helps us upgrade applications running on legacy versions of .NET and also migrate them to Azure. Today we're going to focus on the upgrade portion. And, the tooling will do all the work for us! But it doesn't do everything at once, and that's good. It introduces checkpoints into the .NET upgrade process to tell us what it has been up to we can then guide it towards the outcome we want. And at each of those checkpoints it creates a markdown file t...
Reducing C++ template bloat by factoring out the type-dependent portions of the function, practical exam
Applying our principles.
Reducing C++ template bloat by factoring out the type-dependent portions of the function
Looking for consolidation points.
Go 1.27.0-1 Microsoft build now available
A new release of the Microsoft build of Go is now available for download.
Go 1.26.7-1 and 1.25.14-1 Microsoft builds now available
A new release of the Microsoft build of Go is now available for download.
Outgrowing SQL Server Express? Upgrade to Azure SQL Database Free Tier in 3 Steps
If you’ve been building local prototypes, internal tools, web backends, or lightweight services on SQL Server Express, you know the routine: it’s free, familiar, and gets the job done – until you hit hardware limits or spend weekends manual backup scripts and handling OS patches. Learn how to upgrade from SQL Server Express to Azure SQL Database free tier in 3 simple steps. Whether you're running SQL Server 2022 (or older) and hitting the hard 10 GB storage wall, or using SQL Server 2025 and realizing 50 GB of disk space doesn't solve the strict 1.4 GB memory bottleneck, staying on Express limits your applica...
MSSQL Extension for VS Code: SQL Formatter, Azure SQL Database Provisioning, and More
Writing and maintaining SQL is easier when you can eliminate repetitive steps and keep your scripts cleanly formatted. With the MSSQL extension for VS Code v1.45, we're introducing the Public Preview of the SQL Formatter alongside the General Availability of Azure SQL Database Provisioning and Shortcuts Configuration. You can now apply consistent T-SQL formatting across your projects, create free tier cloud databases with automated post-deployment actions, and streamline frequently used commands and queries directly inside Visual Studio Code. What's new in MSSQL extension for VS Code v1.45 Here's a summary of t...
On wrapping a callable in a lambda that just calls it with the same parameters
Just use the callable directly.
Aspire 13.5: Fresh pixels and better workflows
Aspire 13.5 refreshes the dashboard and aspire.dev, expands the Interaction Service, adds cross-scope Azure references and Kubernetes persistent volumes, and brings live terminals into the AppHost.
Announcing AppxManifest IntelliSense Support in the WinApp VS Code Extension
The WinApp VS Code extension exists to make Windows app development feel at home in VS Code. It brings the Windows App Development CLI right into the editor, so you can initialize, run, debug, define the identity of, package, and sign Windows apps built with .NET, WPF, WinUI, C++, Electron, Rust, Tauri, or Flutter, all without switching tools. Get it now: Install the WinApp extension from the VS Code Marketplace. We're excited to announce the release of v0.3.0. This release brings schema-aware IntelliSense to your manifest files, adds workspace search to the commands that require a file or folder, and i...
Azure Cosmos DB in the Agentic Era: Data Tools for Developers and AI Agents
Anthropic's 2026 Agentic Coding Trends Report captures an important tension in how developers use AI. Engineers report using AI in roughly 60% of their work, yet say they can fully delegate only 0–20% of their tasks. AI is becoming a constant collaborator, but it still needs setup, supervision, validation, and human judgment. That gap is especially relevant when an agent starts working with a database. Database requests often sound easy. “Show me the failed orders from last week.” “Why is this query expensive?” “Does this container have the field I need?” For a developer, answering those question...
The Two Hybrid Searches in Microsoft SQL
Hybrid search is usually described as combining keyword search with vector search. Microsoft SQL does that, for sure, but we do quite a bit more right out of the box. SQL dynamically evaluates queries and switches between kNN and ANN vector search based on cost and selectivity. These two types of hybrid search, work together, ensuring your semantic queries return the best possible results to your apps and agents. Text search In 1998, Microsoft Research Cambridge welcomed Stephen Robertson, one of the principal architects of BM25, or Best Matching 25, the relevance-ranking algorithm that became foundational to m...
What’s a PFN?
What's a PFN? MSIX introduced Package identity in Windows 8. While the familiar package identity "5-tuple" was functional, it wasn't especially convenient to pass through APIs or embed in resources such as files, registry keys, URLs, or XML documents. To address this, Windows defined an opaque string representation known as a Package Moniker. Windows called a related identifier derived from a package's Name and Publisher the Package Family Moniker. These were commonly abbreviated as PM and PFM. As development progressed, Windows quite sensibly required new APIs to pass through API Design Review. The review tea...
Why did the Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows have a special sticker announcing that it also had Tetris?
A contingency plan.
Apple Silicon and Xcode 27 images available in pay-as-you-go (preview)
Apple developers can now build and test their applications natively on Apple Silicon in Azure Pipelines. New arm64 macOS agents are available in public preview through the pay-as-you-go GitHub-hosted Agents pool. Starting with Apple Silicon, Azure Pipelines is bringing over some of the agent sizes already available in GitHub Actions. The preview includes the following macOS images: Running workloads directly on Apple Silicon avoids the overhead and compatibility limitations of emulating arm64 on Intel hardware. It also lets teams validate applications against the same architecture used by current Apple device...
From single call to agents: five new Claude capabilities now available in Microsoft Foundry
Structured outputs, web search, web fetch, MCP connector, and tool search are now available for Claude models hosted on Azure in Microsoft Foundry, turning a model endpoint into a production agent platform.
How do functions like alloca allocate memory from the stack?
The usual probing.
Beyond Vector Indexes: Azure SQL Brings Optimizer Intelligence to Vector Search
Why production AI retrieval depends on more than vector index performance. It's easy to think of AI retrieval as a vector search problem. For many developers, the first conversation starts with vector index benchmarks: How many queries per second can it handle? What's the latency? What's the recall? How well does it scale? Those metrics are critical, but production AI retrieval rarely consists of vector similarity alone. Equally important is what happens when vector search becomes part of a real application workload, one that includes filters, joins, security policies, ranking logic, and live operational d...
Windows App Development CLI v0.6 – create new WinUI applications, sign packages with Azure, and more
Windows App Development CLI v0.6.0 has just shipped and contains a ton of new features. Much of the changes in this release focus on getting from zero to a running app faster: scaffold a fresh WinUI project with a single command, search real WinUI controls and samples without leaving the terminal, and run your app straight from a .csproj with no manual build step first. It also adds cloud-based artifact signing, sparse-package workflows, and agent-friendly UI recordings. Grab it with winget install Microsoft.WinAppCLI, or head to the repo for npm and other install options. Here's a tour of the highligh...
Forcing an ARM64X executable to run as a specific architecture
You can request the target machine architecture.
Git-APE SaaS Factory
Agentic Platform Engineering for SaaS. Accelerating the Path to Market with Git-APE If you are an ISV building SaaS on Azure, the first demo is usually the easy part. The harder work is turning that proof of concept into a secure, scalable, commercial-ready service that can be operated confidently in production. That gap shows up quickly. Tenant isolation, identity, entitlement, marketplace fulfilment, metering, cost controls, observability, compliance evidence, and a clean path from customer purchase to tenant provisioning all need to be designed in, not bolted on later. None of those are side quests....
Go 1.26.6-1 and 1.25.13-1 Microsoft builds now available
A new release of the Microsoft build of Go including security fixes is now available for download.
Clearer Build Optimization Results with GitHub Copilot
We know that slow builds are a consistent theme in feedback from C++ developers. Your feedback helped us to shape GitHub Copilot build performance for Windows, an agent that can trace your build, find bottlenecks, apply optimizations, and measure the result. When using the agent, the clearest outcome is a straightforward win. The agent changes your project, rebuilds it, and shows how your build is made faster. Sometimes, a change may make a clean rebuild slightly slower while improving the incremental builds you run throughout the day. At other times, we also observed that optimizations may help without reachi...
MSVC Build Tools Preview updates – August 2026
Try the latest updates to MSVC Build Tools Preview
Routing and Failover for Microsoft.Extensions.AI
Route requests across models and providers natively in Microsoft.Extensions.AI with RoutingChatClient, SemanticRoutingChatClient, and FailoverChatClient — new experimental primitives for content-based routing, failover, and custom routing policies.
Your best friend: BlockOnPossibleDataLoss=True
BlockOnPossibleDataLoss can frustrate developers, but it's one of the most important safeguards in database deployment. Here's how to keep your local development loop fast while protecting the data that matters.
A little helper class for managing LPPROC_THREAD_ATTRIBUTE_LIST s
Another RAII-style wrapper.
Building Agents for Teams: Managing the noise of collaboration
Most of us are familiar with one-to-one agent chats: private, direct interactions where rules are relatively simple. With only you and the agent, each moment has clear intent. You can ask follow-up questions, pause, or restart without worrying about how each exchange affects anyone else. Collaboration in groups works differently. Every message competes for attention, and a reply that is helpful to one individual may interrupt five others. Effective collaboration is built on countless small social judgments and gestures: deciding when to respond or stay quiet, choosing how much to say, and using the conventions...
