Connecting Using the Various Providers and Drivers

Now that you know what your options are in terms of providers and drivers, the following sections detail them one by one, with a special focus on putting the features in SQL Server 2014 to work.

Using SNAC

SNAC is a net-library that contains both the latest OLE DB provider and ODBC provider for using the rich features in SQL Server 2014 databases. It is compatible for accessing SQL Server 7, 2000, 2005, 2008, 2008 R2, and 2012 databases as well.

The code for SNAC is contained in the single dynamic link library sqlncli11.dll, and it serves as provider, driver, and API for applications that call its underlying COM functions from unmanaged code (that is, from C or C++).

The bottom line with SNAC ...

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