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Databricks SQL release notes 2025

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The following Databricks SQL features and improvements were released in 2025.

February 21, 2025

Databricks SQL version 2025.10 is now available in the Preview channel. Review the following section to learn about new features, behavioral changes, and bug fixes.

Changes in 2025.10

Behavioral changes

  • In Delta Sharing, table history is enabled by default

    Shares created using the SQL command ALTER SHARE <share> ADD TABLE <table> now have history sharing (WITH HISTORY) enabled by default. See ALTER SHARE.

  • Credential SQL statements return an error when there’s a credential type mismatch

    With this release, if the credential type specified in a credential management SQL statement doesn’t match the type of the credential argument, an error is returned and the statement is not run. For example, for the statement DROP STORAGE CREDENTIAL 'credential-name', if credential-name is not a storage credential, the statement fails with an error.

    This change is made to help prevent user errors. Previously, these statements would run successfully, even if a credential that didn’t match the specified credential type was passed. For example, the following statement would successfully drop storage-credential: DROP SERVICE CREDENTIAL storage-credential.

    This change affects the following statements:

New features and improvements

  • Use the timestampdiff & timestampadd in generated column expressions

    Delta Lake generated column expressions now support timestampdiff and timestampadd functions.

  • Support for SQL pipeline syntax

    You can now compose SQL pipelines. A SQL pipeline structures a standard query, such as SELECT c2 FROM T WHERE c1 = 5, into a step-by-step sequence, as shown in the following example:

    FROM T
|> SELECT c2
|> WHERE c1 = 5

    To learn about the supported syntax for SQL pipelines, see SQL Pipeline Syntax.

    For background on this cross-industry extension, see SQL Has Problems. We Can Fix Them: Pipe Syntax In SQL (by Google Research).

  • Make HTTP request using the http_request function

    You can now create HTTP connections and through them make HTTP requests using the http_request function.

  • Update to DESCRIBE TABLE returns metadata as structured JSON

    You can now use the DESCRIBE TABLE AS JSON command to return table metadata as a JSON document. The JSON output is more structured than the default human-readable report and can be used to interpret a table’s schema programmatically. To learn more, see DESCRIBE TABLE AS JSON.

  • Trailing blank insensitive collations

    Added support for trailing blank insensitive collations. For example, these collations treat 'Hello' and 'Hello ' as equal. To learn more, see RTRIM collation.

Bug fixes

  • Improved incremental clone processing

    This release includes a fix for an edge case where an incremental CLONE might re-copy files already copied from a source table to a target table. See Clone a table on Azure Databricks.

February 13, 2025

The following features and updates were released during the week of February 13, 2025.

User interface updates

Data discovery

  • Preview Unity Catalog metadata: Preview metadata for Unity Catalog assets by hovering over an asset in the schema browser. This capability is available in Catalog Explorer and other interfaces where you use the schema browser, such as AI/BI dashboards and the SQL editor.

    A card containing unity catalog metadata, such as owner and recent query history is displayed to the right of the catalog listing.

  • Filter to find data assets you can query Filter settings in Catalog Explorer’s schema browser now includes a Can query checkbox. Selecting this option excludes objects that you can view but not query.

    Filter settings with the can query toggle selected

January 30, 2025

The following features and updates were released during the week of January 30, 2025.

User interface updates

SQL warehouse

A Completed query count chart (Public Preview) is now available on the SQL warehouse monitoring UI. This new chart shows the number of queries finished in a time window, including canceled and failed queries. The chart can be used with the other charts and the Query History table to assess and troubleshoot the performance of the warehouse. The query is allocated in the time window it is completed. Counts are averaged per minute. For more information, see Monitor a SQL warehouse.

SQL editor

  • Expanded data display in charts: Visualizations created in the SQL editor now support up to 15,000 rows of data.

January 23, 2025

The following features and updates were released during the week of January 23, 2025.

Changes in 2024.50

Databricks SQL version 2024.50 includes the following behavioral changes, new features, and improvements.

Behavioral changes

  • The VARIANT data type can no longer be used with operations that require comparisons

You cannot use the following clauses or operators in queries that include a VARIANT data type:

  • DISTINCT
  • INTERSECT
  • EXCEPT
  • UNION
  • DISTRIBUTE BY

These operations perform comparisons, and comparisons that use the VARIANT data type produce undefined results and are not supported in Databricks. If you use the VARIANT type in your Azure Databricks workloads or tables, Databricks recommends the following changes:

  • Update queries or expressions to explicitly cast VARIANT values to non-VARIANT data types.
  • If you have fields that must be used with any of the above operations, extract those fields from the VARIANT data type and store them using non-VARIANT data types.

To learn more, see Query variant data.

New features and improvements

  • Support for parameterizing the USE CATALOG with IDENTIFIER clause

The IDENTIFIER clause is supported for the USE CATALOG statement. With this support, you can parameterize the current catalog based on a string variable or parameter marker.

  • COMMENT ON COLUMN support for tables and views

The COMMENT ON statement supports altering comments for view and table columns.

  • New SQL functions

The following new built-in SQL functions are available:

  • dayname(expr) returns the three-letter English acronym for the day of the week for the given date.
  • uniform(expr1, expr2 [,seed]) returns a random value with independent and identically distributed values within the specified range of numbers.
  • randstr(length) returns a random string of length alpha-numeric characters.
  • Named parameter invocation for more functions

The following functions support named parameter invocation:

Bug fixes

  • Nested types now properly accept NULL constraints

This release fixes a bug affecting some Delta generated columns of nested types, for example, STRUCT. These columns would sometimes incorrectly reject expressions based on NULL or NOT NULL constraints of nested fields. This has been fixed.

January 15, 2025

The following updates were released during the week of January 15, 2025.

User interface updates

SQL editor

The new SQL editor (Public Preview) now has the following features:

  • Download naming: Downloaded outputs are now named after the query.
  • Font size adjustments: Quickly adjust font size in the SQL editor using Alt + and Alt - for Windows/Linux, or Opt + and Opt - for macOS.
  • @Mentions in comments: Mention specific users with @ in comments. Mentioned users will receive email notifications.
  • Improved tab switching: Tab switching performance is up to 80% faster for loaded tabs and 62% faster for unloaded tabs.
  • See warehouse details: SQL Warehouse size is now visible in the compute selector without extra clicks.
  • Edit parameter values: Use Ctrl + Enter for Windows/Linux, or Cmd + Enter for macOS, to run a query while editing a parameter value.
  • Retain query results in version history: Query results are now stored with version history.

Visualizations