A quick note on how to obtain the SQL Server 2022 Developer installer.
Introduction
The installer for SQL Server 2022 Developer Edition can be surprisingly hard to find.
The SQL Server download page now only offers SQL Server 2025, and the official SQL Server 2022 documentation only links to the evaluation edition download page.
This post documents where to download the SQL Server 2022 Developer Edition installer.
Note: This article was translated from my original post.
Getting SQL Server 2022 Developer Installer
Download URL
You can download the SQL Server 2022 Developer Edition installer from the following link:
Clicking the link will immediately start the download of SQL2022-SSEI-Dev.exe.
Below, I'll briefly verify that this URL is trustworthy.
Is This URL Trustworthy?
First, the aka.ms domain is a URL shortener operated by Microsoft. It's not something a third party can create arbitrarily, so there's no cause for concern.
Let's check the full URL that https://aka.ms/sqlserver2022developer redirects to using the following command:
$ curl -ILs https://aka.ms/sqlserver2022developer 2>&1 | grep -i "location:" Location: https://download.microsoft.com/download/c/c/9/cc9c6797-383c-4b24-8920-dc057c1de9d3/SQL2022-SSEI-Dev.exe
As you can see, https://aka.ms/sqlserver2022developer actually redirects to https://download.microsoft.com/download/c/c/9/cc9c6797-383c-4b24-8920-dc057c1de9d3/SQL2022-SSEI-Dev.exe.
Since the domain is download.microsoft.com, this is an official Microsoft download page.
Let's also verify the digital signature of the downloaded file SQL2022-SSEI-Dev.exe.
We can confirm that the signature was issued to Microsoft Corporation.
Running this downloaded file launches the SQL Server 2022 Developer Edition installer, as shown below.
Conclusion
This post covered how to obtain the SQL Server 2022 Developer installer.
It was surprisingly tedious to track down, so I really wish Microsoft would maintain download links for older versions.
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