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Roadmap

The roadmap records Backlog, Exploratory, and Deferred work. It is not a statement of shipped behavior or a delivery commitment. Accepted architecture is Committed design; only published and verified release functionality is Available.

The authoritative implementation plan is architecture/delivery-segments.md. The epic catalog is FEATURE_REQUESTS.md. Work is tracked through GitHub issues and the public Azure Data Lab Toolkit Roadmap.

Segments Delivery outcome Gate
S0-S2 Architecture and contracts, installable offline Core, and the toolkit repository’s GitHub CI baseline Contract
S3-S6 Read-only SQL VM plan, secure VM canary, useful SQL VM data lab, and first SQL VM release Contract → Live → Release
S7-S8 Azure SQL Database, then Azure SQL Managed Instance Release
S9-S11 Azure Database for PostgreSQL, PostgreSQL on Azure VM, then containerized PostgreSQL Release
S12-S13 Bicep, then Terraform, as additional deployment engines Release
S14 General Git and CI/CD intent with GitHub, Azure DevOps, GitLab, Gitea, and Forgejo adapters Release
S15-S18 Fabric guidance and workspaces, then items and shortcuts, followed by parallel conditional lanes for CI/CD and FUAM, Rayfin, or TMDL packs Live → Release
S19-S22 Azure Databricks, individually approved later providers, SQL Server on Linux or containers, then Kubernetes Release per target

This order controls delivery focus, not architectural coupling. Terraform does not depend technically on Bicep. Fabric workspace creation does not depend on Git, although Fabric CI/CD depends on Fabric items and whichever Git adapters Fabric actually supports. PostgreSQL does not depend on Fabric. After S16, Fabric CI/CD and solution packs may proceed in parallel; a pack depends on S17 only when its accepted design uses CI/CD.

Research and deterministic contract fixtures may start early. A later segment does not become the active delivery focus until the preceding segment passes its exit gate.

Product epics remain stable across releases, but their implementation work can span several segments. Those slices are tracked as native GitHub sub-issues so, for example, protected local state can support the interactive VM canary without waiting for release-only remote execution. The checked-in sub-issue manifest defines the parent, segment, gate, dependencies, and acceptance delta for each cross-segment or conditional child.

| Gate | Required evidence | | — | — | — | | Contract | Versioned interfaces, deterministic offline fixtures, no unexpected cloud calls, secret references only, and explicit cost, ownership, security, and teardown intent | | Live | Contract evidence plus isolated deployment, positive and negative probes, cost and security checks, failure handling, teardown, orphan query, and still-billable-resource evidence | | Release | Live evidence plus three consecutive clean lifecycles, resume, drift, duplicate-trigger locking and fencing, no unresolved critical or high findings, signed artifacts, and current documentation |

Documentation or a successful create operation cannot pass a gate by itself.

Every target and solution pack must emit a secretStoreDecision: deploy-key-vault, reuse-key-vault, approved-external-store, or justified not-applicable. Every Azure VM must emit an administrativeAccessDecision; the default is Azure Bastion with no public IP. Reuse or opt-out remains explicit, approved, costed, and evidenced.

Key Vault and Bastion are capability modules shared by providers. They are not hidden SQL VM implementation details.

The first implementation will distinguish two non-mutating review steps. -Plan resolves YAML, defaults, derived values, and intended actions offline. -WhatIf compares that plan with live Azure resources after sign-in. Both must produce reviewable evidence before deployment is enabled.

Success for the first implementation is not merely creating a VM. SQL Server on Azure VM must provide a complete, repeatable path from YAML through -Plan, -WhatIf, cost review, guarded PowerShell deployment, probes, HTML evidence, and confirmed teardown with cleanup proof.

Assessment work starts with Azure Arc and the migration component in SQL Server Management Studio. It is a release requirement where applicable, not a prerequisite for planning, security policy, cost estimation, or the first deployment canary.

For implementation status, read Project Status. The authoritative epic catalog separates technical prerequisites from delivery sequencing in FEATURE_REQUESTS.md.