ODBC Drivers: SQL Server Driver vs SQL Server Native Driver

  • Can anyone provide a good description of the differences between the two and the advantages of using one or the other? Also, Am I hallucinating but is the SQL Server Native Driver *NOT* automatically installed with Office?

  • In my experience, I get better connectivity to SQL 2008 (and 2005) using the Native Client. There have been times that using the older SQL ODBC driver simply would not connect.

    Why? I can't say. There is so little time to dig into those things that when I find something else works I simply use it.

    As for whether the Native Client installs with Office, I seem to recall that you need to specifically install the SQL Connectivity Tools (or something like that) to get it on a system without SQL Server installed. I know that is a downloadable package, but don't recall if it is one of the Advanced options in the Office install.

  • The question came up related to this post in an Access forum with some rather funky things happening after SQL Server generates an email.

    http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/accessdev/thread/9ddf7bb7-410e-499a-83b8-2c48a5b1bd1c

  • It is my experience that SQLNCLI has better error handling and reporting than either ODBC or OLEDB. Therefor I would recommend using it if you have the choice. If you need to take advantage of 2005 datatypes, MARS and other things you will have to use it.

    The probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival.

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