If you still run DQS, the date that matters is your SQL Server upgrade. DQS doesn’t come with you to SQL Server 2025.
What Microsoft says
From Microsoft Learn, What’s New in SQL Server 2025, checked November 3, 2026:
Data Quality Services (DQS) is discontinued in this version of SQL Server. We continue to support DQS in SQL Server 2022 (16.x) and earlier versions.
Master Data Services gets the same treatment on the same page. Microsoft’s SQL Server 2025 known issues adds the practical part: an in-place upgrade with DQS installed fails at the Feature Rules step, and the workaround is to run setup with /IACCEPTDQUNINSTALL, which uninstalls it.
| Your SQL Server | DQS status |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Not available |
| 2022 | Supported; mainstream support to January 2028, extended to January 2033 (lifecycle) |
| 2019 and earlier | Supported while that version is in support |
What DQS did, and what replaces each part
Microsoft’s 2025 documentation names no successor, so split DQS into its jobs:
| DQS job | What to use now |
|---|---|
| Knowledge base of valid values and rules | Generated tests: valid-value lists, patterns, ranges, from a data profile |
| Data profiling during a cleansing project | A data profiling tool that keeps history |
| Cleansing and correcting values | Your ETL code, or a master data tool |
| Matching and survivorship | A master data or entity resolution tool |
| The SSIS DQS Cleansing transformation | Transform logic in the package, plus a test after the load |
Microsoft’s current data quality product is Purview Data Quality. For on-premises SQL Server, its supported sources table (updated April 2026) lists data quality scans but no data profiling. See whether Purview works with on-prem SQL Server.
Where DataOps TestGen fits
TestGen takes over the checking side. It connects with a read-only SQL login, profiles 55 characteristics per column, flags 32 kinds of hygiene issue, and generates tests from 34 test types. A DQS domain with a short list of valid codes maps to a generated Value Match test. A format rule becomes a pattern test. And monitors watch freshness, volume, and schema, which DQS never did.
It doesn’t correct or merge records. Be clear about that before you plan the migration: if your DQS project’s value was matching customers, TestGen tells you the duplicates exist (how to find them), and something else resolves them.
TestGen supports SQL Server 2019 and later, with 2017 available by request, so you can start before the upgrade. Open source is free for one user, one connection, and one project. Start at the SQL Server install page, and see the best SQL Server data quality tool for the wider comparison.