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Get the latest information, insights, and news from Microsoft.
Highlights
Are You Getting Everything You Can from Your Visual Studio Subscription?
Introducing Agentic Autofix for code and dependencies
Azure DevOps available in Microsoft Copilot Cowork
Latest posts
Preparing for Your Next Certification Could Start with Your Visual Studio Subscription
Are you thinking about earning a Microsoft certification to help advance your career, build on your existing skills, or meet new requirements at work? If so, you may already be wondering where to start. Which courses, labs, and hands-on exercises will help you prepare? How much time will it take to find the right resources, and how much will that training cost? Here's something you may not be aware of: Eligible Visual Studio Subscriptions already include many of the learning resources you need to prepare for your next certification. Visual Studio subscribers can access training from Cloud Academy ...
PostgreSQL to SQL Field Notes: Operational Statistics
Welcome to SQL First, welcome to SQL! You're going to like this. I've said this before, but it's still true: moving from PostgreSQL is real work, and depending on your old database, this process will vary widely in complexity. I am confident that you're going to love the mindful and modern features of SQL. Take your time, make the most of the resources built to help you in Microsoft Learn, and know there is a huge community of SQL developers ready to help along the way. This blog is for the PG developer Good news! The SQL standard is shared across both engines; that should help you get up to speed quick...
PIX 2610.28 – the biggest release of 2026
Today we released PIX 2610.28, available for download here. This release supports all the new retail and preview D3D12 features released today in DirectX Agility SDK 620 and 721. This is the first PIX build combining support for both retail and preview Agility SDKs, simplifying the user experience. Beyond that, 2610.28 brings many new features and improvements since the last regular PIX release, PIX 2603.25, including all the features previewed in the May and June preview builds. It also includes the most bug fixes we've ever released in a single version of PIX. Contents ...
DirectX Dump Files are now ready for your retail games
At GDC 2026, we shared our vision for bringing console-level GPU developer tools to Windows, and in June we released the DirectX Dump Files public preview. Thank you to everyone who tried the preview and sent us feedback. Today, DirectX Dump Files are ready for your retail games. Starting with Agility SDK 1.620 and PIX 2610.28, you can capture GPU crashes on your players' PCs and on your own machines, then investigate them in PIX using one consistent workflow across hardware vendors. We couldn't have done this alone. DirectX Dump Files bring together data from Windows, Direct3D, and each hardware vendor's d...
Announcing Agility SDK 1.620 Retail and 1.722 Preview: DirectX Dump Files, Partial Graphics Programs, and So Much More!
Today, we are pleased to announce the release of Agility SDK 1.620 retail and Agility SDK 1.722-preview! Agility SDK 1.620 brings DirectX Dump Files to retail, along with Fence Barriers Tier 1, the Batched Asynchronous Command List APIs, and Partial Graphics Programs. Meanwhile, Agility SDK 1.722-preview introduces major updates to DirectX Raytracing capabilities for highly detailed, dynamic scenes. Here's the list of everything in Agility SDK 1.620: And here's what's new in Agility SDK 1.722-preview: Quick note: Shader Model 6.10 remains in preview for t...
Publish Visual Studio Marketplace extensions securely with Trusted Publishing
Publish Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio extensions from GitHub Actions or Azure Pipelines without storing a long-lived personal access token.
[PREVIEW] Raytracing: Clustered Geometry, Partitioned TLAS, Indirect Acceleration Structure Builds
Today we're introducing a preview of DirectX Raytracing (DXR) Clustered Geometry and Partitioned Top-Level Acceleration Structures (PTLAS), with a unified GPU-driven API for building and updating them. This is part of a larger AgilitySDK release described in the parent post: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/agilitysdk-1-620-retail-and-1-722-preview/ For DXR this is the most significant update since its debut in 2018. Here's the motivation for Clustered Geometry and Partitioned TLAS: At object level scope within a scene, animation, streaming, and generated geometry can repeatedly incur the cost...
Async Commands Fallback Layer
We're pleased to announce that Agility SDK 1.620.1 includes a fallback layer for Batched Async Commands, letting developers use the new commands on hardware that doesn't support them natively. You can find the NuGet package here. Background Batched Async Commands were introduced in the Agility SDK 1.720 Preview as a new set of copy, fill, clear, and resolve commands. The legacy versions of these operations are implicitly serialized, since the original resource barrier model has no way to say that two copies don't depend on each other. The batched versions drop that implicit serialization and take many operation...
Introducing the Microsoft Copilot harness in Foundry Agent Service
A model can reason about a task. Completing that task takes more: the right context, tools, execution environment, and controls, and an agent loop that brings them together. Microsoft’s unified harness strategy brings a shared execution foundation across our agent experiences while preserving customer choice. In Microsoft Foundry, that means you can choose a supported model and decide how much of the agent stack to build yourself, without having to assemble every layer around it. Today, we’re introducing the Microsoft Copilot harness in Foundry Agent Service in public preview. It gives developers a fully ma...
Azure SDK Release (October 2026)
October's Azure SDK highlights include Azure Core authentication updates, managed identity improvements for Python and Java, and the first stable Cosmos DB libraries for Rust.
C++/WinRT overcorrection: Using make_self and immediately converting it to the projected interface
You are taking the scenic route.
Streamline creation and management of AI-ready, custom apps with SharePoint Embedded
SharePoint content isn’t limited to sites and document libraries. Increasingly, organizations are bringing Microsoft 365 content capabilities directly into the custom apps their users rely on. That’s where SharePoint Embedded comes in. SharePoint Embedded is a cloud-based, API-only document management platform that enables developers to bring Microsoft 365 content capabilities into custom applications, including Office collaboration, Microsoft Purview security and compliance, and Copilot experiences. The application provides the user experience, while SharePoint Embedded provides the content platform behind i...
Agentic CI/CD with Azure Cosmos DB: Isolated Environments for a Swarm of AI Agents
Give each coding task its own disposable database environment, then merge the reviewed changes - not the test database. When parallel coding agents share a database In From Local Development to CI Workflows with the Azure Cosmos DB Emulator, we used FleetCharge to make local development and CI repeatable. Start the emulator, seed known data, run the checks, and clean up afterward. Now consider several AI coding agents working on the same application at once. One is changing dispatch behavior. Another is adding a depot rule. A third is updating tests. Each has its own branch, and perhaps its own Git worktree,...
Copilot UX components are generally available: bring interactive experiences into Copilot
Copilot UX components are generally available with SPFx 1.24. Bring interactive dashboards, forms, and business actions directly into Microsoft Copilot, so people can complete tasks in context using experiences built on existing web skills and systems.
Azure DevOps Server RC (26H2) Is Now Available
Today we're releasing the release candidate (RC) of the next Azure DevOps Server release. It brings new features previously available in our hosted version, along with security and quality improvements. You can download Azure DevOps Server RC (26H2) today. A direct upgrade to Azure DevOps Server RC is supported from any version of Team Foundation Server, including Team Foundation Server 2015 and newer. Direct upgrade from this RC release to the eventual RTW will be supported. If you prefer to wait until RTW to upgrade your servers, trying out this RC on a test deployment is a great first step. Note: Extended ...
External Location
We talked recently about PackageVolume as one of the ways to stage packages. Let's turn our gaze to External Location, which plays a distinct role in MSIX, with similarities to - and important differences from - other options. Why is External Location? MSIX deployment provides a full-service software installation stack. The process is simple: collect your content, describe your package in an , and run makeappx.exe and signtool.exe to create a signed .msix to distribution and install. But...what if you already have a product with an existing installer? What if you need to extend your product with features uniq...
Visual Studio October Update – Compare Commits to Your Code, Resolve Conflicts in Bulk, Keep Coding
Compare commits with your working tree, resolve merge conflicts in bulk, and keep coding with refreshed Copilot chat, Hot Exit, keyboard tab controls, and Fonts and Colors.
Blazor Welcomes Open-Source Contributions from Infragistics
Microsoft and Infragistics are collaborating on Blazor through free, open-source components, new .NET 11 analyzers, and developer tooling.
Why don’t we run the taskbar and Task Manager at high priority, so they can remain responsive?
Hurry up and wait.
Inspecting Local Data with Azure Cosmos DB Shell
Explore local data from the terminal with Azure Cosmos DB Shell. Connect to the emulator, inspect FleetCharge documents, run queries, and point-read depot partitions.
Announcing Azure AI Speech LLM 09-2026: Broader locale support
Learn how Azure AI Speech LLM 09-2026 improves multilingual language and locale support with improved quality and latency.
PostgreSQL Like A Pro: Build, query, and troubleshoot without leaving VS Code
Build, query, and troubleshoot without leaving VS Code.
Puzzling out why a program doesn’t work when run from a batch file, but works when double-clicked from Explorer
Mimicking the operation more accurately.
PHP2Shell and Azure DevOps: what to check
On October 21, 2026, PHP disclosed two critical vulnerabilities that can allow remote code execution. Neither Azure DevOps Services, our cloud-hosted offering, nor Azure DevOps Server, our on-premises product, uses PHP to handle customer requests. PHP runtimes used by pipelines, containers, and deployed applications have their own patching requirements. Deployment scope: cloud and on-premises Azure DevOps Services (cloud). Microsoft operates and updates the service. You remain responsible for PHP installed by your pipeline steps or bundled into custom images and applications. Azure DevOps Server (on-premises)...
Keep your investigation between sessions
Start a standalone Markdown note and use the opt-in Hot Exit preview to resume unsaved work next session.
.NET October 2026 Out-of-Band Security Updates
Out-of-band security updates for .NET address the Brotli decoder vulnerability and tarball ownership vulnerability.
The paper that split the database in four: inside Azure SQL Database Hyperscale, aka Socrates
Under the Hood: The Research Behind Microsoft SQL, part 1 The Microsoft SQL team is always innovating. They do this in day-to-day efforts, but there are also brand new efforts that are constantly being explored, investigated, tested, and researched. Our engineering team partners closely with MSR (Microsoft Research) on some of these efforts. The team writes papers, submits these papers to conferences, and generally gets high recognition for their ingenuity in the databases and cloud space. One thing I’ve been thinking about recently is how little I actually have read the papers being written, and what scena...
Code with Cosmos: Build a Production-Ready AI App in Four Episodes
Follow an AI application from a blank folder to a system built for production AI application development often starts with a promising prototype. A real application has to do more than produce an answer: it needs current operational data, the ability to take actions and complete transactions, memory that carries across sessions, coordination between specialized agents, and enough visibility for developers to understand and improve how the system behaves. Today, we're introducing Code with Cosmos, a new four-part Azure Cosmos DB video series that follows one app – an AI travel planner – from a blank folder...
Why didn’t we use the COM static store to clean up the unmarshalable delegate?
It cleans up at the wrong time.
From Local Development to CI Workflows with the Azure Cosmos DB Emulator
When you change a database-backed feature, a successful HTTP response isn't enough. You need to know that the write reached storage, the application retrieved the updated record, and the next answer reflects it. The Azure Cosmos DB Emulator runs locally in Docker and lets us use the SDK we'll use in production. We'll develop against it first, then carry our tests into GitHub Actions. Each update to an open pull request must pass against a fresh emulator before we merge. Building on Theo van Kraay's local development walkthrough, we'll use FleetCharge, a Python demo built with Microsoft Agent Framework and F...
Are You Getting Everything You Can from Your Visual Studio Subscription?
What if you could experiment with a new Azure service without requesting additional budget, prepare for your next technical certification using learning resources you already have, or build a dashboard without creating every UI component from scratch? If you're a Visual Studio subscriber, you may already have benefits that can help you do all three. Here’s a few possibilities you may not have considered: 1. What could you build with your Azure credits? Have you been curious about an Azure service but haven't had the opportunity, or the budget, to try it? Maybe you want to experiment with an AI-powered a...
Why didn’t we use CoRegisterInitializeSpy to clean up the unmarshalable delegate?
Looking more closely at the function's behavior and requirements.
Develop enterprise-grade apps with SharePoint Embedded
Taking an enterprise application from development to production requires confidence that it can scale, stay reliable, and be governed effectively. Recent SharePoint Embedded updates give developers clearer guidance for making those decisions, from understanding limits and managing throttling to choosing the right permissions. In this blog post, we highlight updates that help you: Read on to get more details and watch the SharePoint Embedded presentation below to learn more about these updates: Plan for scale with clearer baselines and limits We updated the container st...
Embeddings and vector search in Microsoft Agent Framework for Go
Build semantic search with Go structs, generate embeddings through a common API, and connect vector retrieval to agent context and memory.
🚀 React Native Windows v0.85 is here
We're excited to release React Native Windows 0.85.0, built on React Native 0.85.3. React Native Windows v0.85 completes the move to the New Architecture, updates the Windows build toolchain, and adds new component capabilities along with touch, text, accessibility, and rendering fixes. 🔥 What's New in RNW v0.85? New Architecture only The legacy architecture has been removed. Apps still on the old architecture must migrate to Fabric before upgrading to 0.85. New projects already target the New Architecture. 🔗 New vs. Old Architecture · React Native for Windows Updated toolchain React Native Windows ...
Microsoft CppCon 2026 Trip Report
CppCon 2026 is a wrap! Microsoft returned to Aurora, Colorado, for a week of talks, technical discussions, and conversations with developers from across the C++ community. Microsoft C++ @ CppCon At our booth, we met people building games, financial systems, developer tools, embedded software, scientific tools, and other applications. Some were working with the latest language features, and others were maintaining and modernizing systems that have been in production for decades. Many talked to us about debugging, performance, build systems, or modern C++, and a growing number were experimenting with ways AI can ...