Tejas Shah

Tejas is a principal program manager in Azure Data Platform team. He leads SQL Server on Linux and containers strategy across all versions. He has a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Computer Engineering and 21 years of industry experience. He has been part of Microsoft for nearly 18 years. He works with several Tier 1 SQL Server customers and partners in the field to ensure successful implementation of the SQL Server database platform. He also works with many resources including support, field, MVPs and community to understand the product usage and get feedback from the engagements to drive improvements in the product. He has in-depth technical knowledge and experience of the SQL Server product spanning 10 versions of SQL Server including the latest release.

Sessions for 2026

Beyond LIKE: Regex & Fuzzy Matching for Advanced Pattern Matching in Azure SQL & SQL Server 2025

Modern apps need smarter text handling. This session dives into native Regex and Fuzzy Matching in Azure SQL, SQL DB in Fabric and SQL Server 2025—using REGEXP_LIKE, REGEXP_REPLACE, REGEXP_SUBSTR, and fuzzy algorithms to validate, extract, cleanse, and handle typo‑tolerant scenarios. Includes real demos and performance tips.

From FOR JSON to Native JSON: Build Faster Apps with Native JSON in SQL

JSON powers APIs, events, and configs. Azure SQL and SQL Server let you keep relational and JSON data together and work with payloads cleanly. Learn patterns to ingest, validate, query, transform, index, and model JSON—handling arrays, drift, and API sync with fast, maintainable T‑SQL.

Regex Deep Dive in SQL: From SQLCLR Assemblies to First‑Class T‑SQL

Regex—one of the longest‑requested features in SQL—is now native and POSIX‑compliant in T‑SQL. This session shows how to migrate SQLCLR and app‑level regex into REGEXP functions, map validation/extraction patterns, handle edge cases, and apply performance tips to modernize text pipelines.

Top New T‑SQL Features in SQL Server 2025 Every Developer Should Know

Text‑heavy workloads power search, sign‑ups, telemetry, and cleanup—and SQL Server 2025 brings huge upgrades to handle them. Learn how to replace app‑side regex and SQLCLR code with native REGEXP functions, apply Fuzzy Matching (Damerau–Levenshtein / Jaro‑Winkler) for dedupe and entity resolution, and use modern T‑SQL utilities like UNISTR, ANSI ||, SUBSTRING(), BASE64, PRODUCT(), and BIGINT‑safe DATEADD.

Previous Sessions

Zero to Hero with SQL Server on Linux - DBA & Developers

This is a demo filled session where we talk about SQL Server on Linux. We start with basics like using Ansible scripts to deploy SQL Server on Linux, configure best practices to run SQL Server on Linux and also talk about advanced options like configuring performance best practices and HA/DR solutions for SQL Server. Finally, we will discuss the latest news about SQL Server on Linux coming hot from the Microsoft product team.

SQL Server Containers & Kubernetes - Going to Production!

Are you a Database Administrator, DevOps engineer, Cloud Architect or a Developer looking to modernize your data estate and build a true hybrid data estate that does not restrict your choice of deployment? Then this session is for you, learn how you can crawl, walk and run with SQL Server containers in Kubernetes!!