I vividly remember going into a meeting in the late summer of 2024 to review all the new features of SQL Server 2025. Our team had put such energy into AI as a focus for this release I honestly was a bit concerned about what we might have sacrificed regarding the core SQL Server engine, specifically features for security, performance, and availability. I knew some of the major engine features we could pull from the cloud like optimized locking (OL), but I was not sure how many features could make our release schedule.