22-25 April 2026

Zoran Rilak

Zoran is a Senior Program Manager on the Azure SQL Managed Instance team based in Belgrade, Serbia. With two decades of industry experience, he drives efforts in the networking area to empower the users of Azure SQL Managed Instance with a broad gamut of connectivity scenarios, flexible network topologies, and ease of configuration and use.

Zoran Rilak's Sessions

Architecting Intelligence: What Powers SQL CopilotsSQLBits 2026

SQL Copilots are reshaping how data professionals work—accelerating query development, improving user's efficiency, and enabling interaction with complex data. This session dives into the shared backend for copilots in SSMS, MSSQL in VS Code, and Fabric SQL, exploring architecture, top use cases, and showcasing real-world demos to help you maximize Copilot impact for your SQL database.

Elevate SQL development with VS Code, GitHub Copilot and Microsoft SQL driversSQLBits 2026

This demo-heavy session highlights the MSSQL extension for Visual Studio Code, now more robust with new AI-driven features to streamline SQL development. With GitHub Copilot, you can move faster from schema to code, generate data, explore relationships, and keep your app in sync. What’s new in connectivity for Python and other languages, enabling faster, more secure cross-platform development.

Hyperscale - the SQL Database for All WorkloadsSQLBits 2026

See how organizations are adopting Azure SQL Database Hyperscale for new and growing workloads. We’ll walk through real implementations—including scaling from zero to hundreds of databases— to learn what DBAs and devs learned along the way, and show demos of the tools and features that made those deployments successful.

When AI meets your database: Securing sensitive data in Azure SQL in an AI-driven worldSQLBits 2026

As AI becomes embedded in every application, protecting sensitive data in Azure SQL is vital. This session explores how to secure sensitive data from AI agents and design a defense-in-depth model using Azure SQL's existing security stack - modern authentication, granular access control, data protection, monitoring, auditing, and more - to confidently use Azure SQL to power AI applications.

Secure networking with Azure and Azure SQL Managed InstanceSQLBits 2023

Database migrations to the cloud must respect the existing networking and security systems already in place. Learn how Azure SQL Managed Instance combines its managed-service PaaS benefits with on-prem and hybrid⁄mixed scenarios. Modern features further leverage the benefits of the cloud to bring new value.

Architecting Intelligence: What Powers SQL CopilotsSQLBits 2026

SQL Copilots are reshaping how data professionals work—accelerating query development, improving user's efficiency, and enabling interaction with complex data. This session dives into the shared backend for copilots in SSMS, MSSQL in VS Code, and Fabric SQL, exploring architecture, top use cases, and showcasing real-world demos to help you maximize Copilot impact for your SQL database.

Elevate SQL development with VS Code, GitHub Copilot and Microsoft SQL driversSQLBits 2026

This demo-heavy session highlights the MSSQL extension for Visual Studio Code, now more robust with new AI-driven features to streamline SQL development. With GitHub Copilot, you can move faster from schema to code, generate data, explore relationships, and keep your app in sync. What’s new in connectivity for Python and other languages, enabling faster, more secure cross-platform development.

Hyperscale - the SQL Database for All WorkloadsSQLBits 2026

See how organizations are adopting Azure SQL Database Hyperscale for new and growing workloads. We’ll walk through real implementations—including scaling from zero to hundreds of databases— to learn what DBAs and devs learned along the way, and show demos of the tools and features that made those deployments successful.

When AI meets your database: Securing sensitive data in Azure SQL in an AI-driven worldSQLBits 2026

As AI becomes embedded in every application, protecting sensitive data in Azure SQL is vital. This session explores how to secure sensitive data from AI agents and design a defense-in-depth model using Azure SQL's existing security stack - modern authentication, granular access control, data protection, monitoring, auditing, and more - to confidently use Azure SQL to power AI applications.

A day with SQL Managed InstanceSQLBits 2023

Spend a whole day with the Azure SQL Managed Instance Product Group to discover how to provision, connect, configure, tune, monitor, troubleshoot and manage your instances and databases, to get the very best out of them. 

Secure networking with Azure and Azure SQL Managed InstanceSQLBits 2023

Database migrations to the cloud must respect the existing networking and security systems already in place. Learn how Azure SQL Managed Instance combines its managed-service PaaS benefits with on-prem and hybrid⁄mixed scenarios. Modern features further leverage the benefits of the cloud to bring new value.