Added

• JSON datatype support #2558
  What was added: Support for reading and writing JSON columns in SQL Server.
  Who benefits: Developers working with semi-structured data in SQL Server.
  Impact: Enhances application flexibility by natively handling JSON content, reducing need for manual parsing.

• Add order hints for Bulk Copy operations #2701
  What was added: Support for specifying order hints during Bulk Copy.
  Who benefits: Data engineers and DBAs managing large data migrations or ETL jobs.
  Impact: Improves bulk data load performance.

• Coding best practices and review process #2666
  What was added: Introduced contributor guidelines, coding best practices, and review processes.
  Who benefits: Open-source contributors and maintainers of the mssql-jdbc project.
  Impact: Improves code quality, consistency, and onboarding experience for new contributors.

• Add new trusted AKV URLs for FR and DE #2708
  What was added: Registered four new Azure Key Vault and Managed HSM endpoints for France and Germany.
  Who benefits: Customers in regulated regions (France, Germany) using AKV for encryption.
  Impact: Enables secure key operations via region-specific trusted endpoints.

Fixed issues

• Fix for null handling in temporal types with bulk copy #2702
  What was fixed: Properly handle null values for temporal types when sendTemporalDataTypesAsStringForBulkCopy=false.
  Who benefits: Developers using batch insert with native temporal types in bulk copy.
  Impact: Prevents failures during bulk inserts, improving reliability of time-sensitive data ingestion.

• Fix string insertion with bulk copy API when sendStringParametersAsUnicode=false #2704
  What was fixed: Resolved issue where strings were inserted as byte arrays in batch bulk copy mode when sendStringParametersAsUnicode is set to false.
  Who benefits: Developers using non-Unicode string inserts in performance-sensitive batch operations.
  Impact: Ensures string integrity during batch inserts, eliminating silent data corruption.