Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 Bible

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Chapter 4: Client Connectivity

4

SQL Server Native Client OLE DB Provider Being

Deprecated

The SQL Server Native Client OLE DB Provider is being deprecated in SQL Server 2012 and will no

longer be available in future releases. Please note that only the SQL Server Native Client OLEDB

Provider is being deprecated at this time and other OLE DB providers will still be supported until an

offi cial announcement is made on their respective deprecations.

The reasoning behind this move is to align with the industry for using ODBC as the standard for native

relational data access. This shift not only allows for universal cross-application compatibility, but this

allows developers to concentrate on one set of APIs for all their native client applications. This means

that if you’re developing for standalone SQL Server and Windows Azure SQL Database, or porting

applications to Windows Azure for the fi rst time, it’s all built on the same API so the development

transition is seamless.

For more detailed information on this transition see this Technet article: http://technet.microsoft

.com/en-us/library/hh510181

Chapter 3 provides details about SQL Server installation requirements.

Native Client Support for LocalDB

SQL Server 2012 introduced Microsoft SQL Server Express LocalDB, a lightweight execution

mode of SQL Server Express that allows developers to connect to a SQL Server Engine to

write and test Transact-SQL code without the hassle of having to manage a full instance of

SQL Server.

Metadata Discovery

Thanks to updates to metadata discovery in SQL Server 2012, applications using SQL Server

Native Client will now get back column or parameter metadata from a query execution

identical to or compatible with the metadata format you specifi ed.

When developing applications that use the SQL Server Native Client while connected to

an earlier version of SQL Server, the metadata discovery functionality corresponds to the

version of the server.

High-Availability/Disaster Recovery Support

When a database connection is established to a SQL Server 2012 server, the failover partner

is automatically identifi ed in a mirrored scenario. This information is used by SNAC to

transparently connect to the failover partner if the principal server fails. The failover

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