Forum Discussion
**BREAKING NEWS** NEW SQL SERVER NATIVE CLIENT 18 released
With this update, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/connect/oledb/oledb-driver-for-sql-server is now the new suggested driver for connecting to SQL Server and Azure SQL databases from Access, ADO and beyond.
Specifically that means using Provider=MSOLEDBSQL in connection strings, vs. older
SQLOLEDB (plus DataTypeCompatibility=80 if want to return old ADO data types) or SQL Server Native Client (SQLNCLI) – as compared further in updated https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/connect/oledb/oledb-driver-for-sql-server docs.
So not only was OLE DB undeprecated in 2018, it's now the suggested driver for connecting to SQL Server and Azure SQL. Whereas up to this point, ODBC was suggested for use in the Access https://support.office.com/en-us/article/import-or-link-to-data-in-an-sql-server-database-a5a3b4eb-57b9-45a0-b732-77bc6089b84e documentation ("ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server" in Create New Data Source driver list).
Use of the OLE DB driver enables support for new SQL Server 2005+ features like multiple active result sets (MARS), query notifications, user-defined types (UDTs), and the new xml data type, as https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/connect/oledb/applications/using-ado-with-oledb-driver-for-sql-server, as may be helpful for ADO.NET and VBA automation.
Besides TLS 1.2, this new OLE DB 18 SQL Server driver provides availability/replication enhancements with multi-subnet failover support.
If interested, you can find details on other SQL Server driver enhancements (in 11, 13, 13.1 and 17) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/connect/odbc/windows/microsoft-odbc-driver-for-sql-server-on-windows and available drivers with each SNAC version (11-13.1) https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlreleaseservices/snac-lifecycle-explained/.
Thanks for letting us know about this, Juan!