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[[{“value”:”Want to move beyond generic AI responses and build agents that actually understand your data? In this @VisualStudioLive session from Visual Studio Live! Las Vegas 2026, Jerry Nixon breaks down how to design AI agents that connect to real enterprise data using modern .NET, SQL, and emerging AI patterns.
You’ll learn how to ground AI with your own data using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), understand context windows and tokens, and build secure, scalable architectures with tools like MCP servers and Data API Builder.
🔑 What You’ll Learn
• How AI agents work and why context (not just prompts) is everything
• The fundamentals of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for enterprise data
• Understanding tokens, context windows, and their impact on performance and cost
• Why every AI interaction is stateless—and how that affects design
• How to connect AI to your data securely using MCP (Model Context Protocol)
• Building agent architectures with tools, skills, and APIs
• Why guardrails matter when using AI with databases (and risks of NL-to-SQL)
• Using Data API Builder to expose secure REST, GraphQL, and MCP endpoints
• Working with embeddings and vector search for semantic data retrieval
• Best practices for building scalable, cost-effective AI-powered applications
⏱️ Chapters
01:14 Evolution of AI for developers: from generation to agentic systems
07:06 Context windows, tokens, and cost considerations
13:25 How AI conversations actually work (stateless turns)
16:20 Inside the context window: prompts, memory, and RAG
21:48 Challenges with context size and compression
30:04 AI architecture patterns: client, agent, and cloud
33:00 Tools, MCP servers, and secure data access
40:02 Risks of NL-to-SQL and importance of guardrails
47:50 Introducing SQL MCP Server and Data API Builder
53:30 Simplifying data APIs for AI-driven apps
59:28 Embeddings, vectors, and semantic search
1:03:49 Chunking data and generating embeddings
1:10:12 Demo: building and querying AI-ready data
1:15:00 The developer’s database
👤 Speaker
Jerry Nixon (@jerrynixon)
Principal Program Manager, SQL Server, Microsoft
🔗 Links
• Explore more VS Live! Las Vegas sessions: https://aka.ms/VSLiveLV26
• Join upcoming VS Live! events: https://aka.ms/VSLiveEvents
#sql #ai #visualstudio #vslive”}]] Read More Microsoft Visual Studio