A Developer’s Guide to SQL Server 2005

13. SQL Server 2005 and Clients

WITH THE ADVENT OF CLR user-defined types, as well as improved large value type data support, XML support, and other SQL Server engine features, comes enhancement of the client APIs. This chapter looks at the enhancements to the ADO.NET client libraries as well as the classic data access APIs—OLE DB, ADO, and ODBC—to support new SQL Server 2005 features.

SQL Native Client

SQL Server ships with support for four main data access APIs currently used in client-side programming:

• ADO.NET

• OLE DB and ADO

• ODBC

• JDBC

ADO.NET is the managed data access layer for the .NET Framework. If you’re using the .NET Framework in your client-side code, the ADO.NET data provider, System.Data.SqlClient, is your best choice. It ...