More details please on why OLE DB is not supported w/ SQL Azure

Question

OLE DB used to be mentioned as a way to connect to SQL Azure, but now it's officially "not supported".  Why is that?  Some have reported using OLE DB w/ SQL Azure with success.  I don't use every feature in OLE DB, so perhaps the subset of features I'm using work fine.  It would be helpful to have more details.

ODBC is supported.  Does this mean I can use the "OLE DB provider for ODBC" and connect using this provider in OLE DB?  Or is any combination that includes OLE DB automatically disqualified from being supported?

Thanks,
Troy

Answer 1

Hello, by not officially supported, we mean we haven't tested OLEDB against SQL Azure thoroughly, so we can't announce that we support OLEDB.

That being said, we do not explicitly block this scenario. Actually we've already done a lot of work, to make critical tools, such as SQLCMD, to work with SQL Azure, even if you're connecting through OLEDB. So you can try to use OLEDB in your scenario. However, we can not assure you it always works.

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Lante, shanaolanxing This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Answer 2

OLE DB is not officially supported at this time because the full breadth of OLE DB functionality has not been tested against SQL Azure to ensure that it works as expected. The SQL Server 2008 R2 SQL Server Native Client ODBC driver is the recommended way to access SQL Azure from Native code.  There are some tools that do use OLE DB in limited scenarios, but any OLE DB usage with SQL Azure would be at your own risk, with no guarantee of fixes if a blocking issue is found now or in the future.  Given this, I would recommend any production application be written with ODBC if SQL Azure is potentially a targeted database.  Since SQL Azure has introduced a fair number of changes with respect to SQL Server, most non-trivial applications will likely need to be revised slightly and recompiled to work with SQL Azure, so this would be an opportunistic time to move to ODBC.

 

Unfortunately SQL Server Native Client is not supported with the OLEDB Provider for ODBC Drivers (msdasql.dll).  Please see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms131035.aspx, where it states:

 

"SQL Server Native Client is not supported from the Microsoft OLE DB provider for ODBC (MSDASQL)."

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Steve Hale [MSFT]

Answer 3

Vote for the OleDB support for Azure here:

http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/forums/34685-sql-azure-feature-voting/suggestions/407269-ole-db-provider-for-connecting-to-sql-azure?ref=title