Sidra Data Platform (version 2025.05: Dazzling Doiras)¶

Released on May 16, 2025

Lighter, faster, sharper...

This release focuses on deep improvements across the platform — from enhanced performance on the web UI to increased supportability with the upgrade to .NET 8. We continue to make progress toward our goal of reducing operational complexity, enhancing scalability, and improving the quality of life for platform users and developers.

Sidra Management UI Performance Upgrades¶

We have made significant performance improvements to the Sidra management web UI. The most notable optimizations include:

Faster loading of the Data Intake Process (DIP) list across all installations.
Reduced load time for the Connector Gallery, which displays only the connectors available for the current Sidra installation.
Improved responsiveness of the Supervisor service list view.

These improvements offer a more fluid user experience and lower operational friction for administrators.

Azure Marketplace Deployment¶

Sidra is now available on the Azure Marketplace. This release includes internal support for a new installation method that simplifies provisioning Sidra into your Azure subscription via a user-friendly wizard. Although the Marketplace listing is still undergoing internal validation and testing, this feature lays the foundation for fully self-service deployments in the near future.

As part of this work, we are also enabling support for the Marketplace Transact model. This allows organizations to license and pay for Sidra directly through Microsoft, consolidating procurement and billing into their existing Azure agreements. We recognize that, for many enterprises, this is a more convenient model and we are happy to provide more options to our existing and new customers.

This new deployment method is powered by a revamped installation model built around a lightweight bootstrapper. The bootstrapper provides a guided web-based experience to configure and deploy Sidra environments in a consistent, modular way. While introduced alongside the Marketplace offering, this model is now the standard approach for all new Sidra installations, regardless of whether they originate from the Azure Marketplace or a direct setup.

Learn more about the new bootstrapper-based deployment model in our step-by-step installation guide.

Improvements to Data Products¶

We have made key changes to the deployment and upgrade behavior of Data Products to ensure that custom infrastructure configurations are retained during template updates. These improvements help preserve user-defined settings across releases and reduce the risk of configuration drift.

The following configurations are now preserved when upgrading a Data Product to a newer version:

Firewall rules for the main SQL database
Firewall rules for Storage Accounts
Key Vault configurations and entries
Elastic Pool settings

These enhancements improve the robustness and predictability of the upgrade process, especially in regulated or tightly secured environments.

Upgrades Sidra Services to .Net 8¶

The Sidra Core service has been upgraded to .NET 8 LTS. This is a key milestone in our platform roadmap, bringing long-term support, improved performance, and new language features to the foundation of Sidra.

Over the coming months, we will continue upgrading the rest of the platform services to .NET 8 to ensure consistency and reduce technical debt.

Other Improvements¶

In addition to the major features and enhancements in this release, we have made several smaller improvements to the platform:

Replaced the Databricks SDK with direct API calls for cluster status checks, avoiding deserialization errors caused by malformed cluster metadata.
Updated the default trace level in Data Products to reduce excess diagnostic output in production environments.
Package Updates:
Bumped Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore and related packages to ensure compatibility with .NET 8.
Updated internal dependencies for improved stability and long-term support.

Issues Resolved in Sidra 2025.05¶

This release of Sidra includes the following bug fixes:

Fixed an issue when deploying a Data Product with a custom VNet located in the same Resource Group as Supervisor. This configuration is unsupported and now properly blocked during deployment. #8935
Fixed a failure in the GetAccessToken step of the RegisterAsset pipeline for CSV ingestion. The issue was caused by a legacy ActivityTemplate using an empty authentication field. #9133

Coming soon¶

In our next release, Sidra will introduce the first version of our FHIR service — a foundational step toward enabling data interoperability for customers in the healthcare and insurance sectors.

We are also focused on delivering multiple quality-of-life improvements across the platform, including:

Performance upgrades to the reverse ETL engine (Sync)
Migration of additional services to our new event-driven installation model
Continued rollout of .NET 8 across all core and peripheral services

Stay tuned — the next release is shaping up to be an exciting one.

We Want Your Feedback¶

Your ideas make Sidra better. For suggestions, issues, or questions, please reach out to us at [email protected].