What's New in SQL Server Native Client

The SQL Server Native Client OLE DB Provider will ship for the last time in SQL Server 2012. For more information, see SQL Server Native Client OLE DB Provider Will Not Ship after SQL Server 2012.

The following topics describe significant new SQL Server Native Client features in SQL Server 2012.

• SQL Server Native Client Support for LocalDB

• Metadata Discovery

• UTF-16 Support in SQL Server Native Client 11.0

• SQL Server Native Client Support for High Availability, Disaster Recovery

• Accessing Diagnostic Information in the Extended Events Log

In addition, ODBC in SQL Server Native Client now supports three features that were added to standard ODBC in the Windows 7 SDK:

• Asynchronous execution on connection-related operations. For more information, see Asynchronous Execution.

• C Data Type Extensibility. For more information, see C Data Types in ODBC.

  To support this feature in SQL Server Native Client, SQLGetDescField can return SQL_C_SS_TIME2 (for time types) or SQL_C_SS_TIMESTAMPOFFSET (for datetimeoffset) instead of SQL_C_BINARY, if your application uses ODBC 3.8. For more information, see Data Type Support for ODBC Date/Time Improvements.

• Calling SQLGetData with a small buffer multiple times to retrieve a large parameter value. For more information, see Retrieving Output Parameters Using SQLGetData.

The following topics describe SQL Server Native Client behavior changes in SQL Server 2012.

• When calling ICommandWithParameters::SetParameterInfo, the value passed to the pwszName parameter must be a valid identifier. For more information, see ICommandWithParameters.

• SQLDescribeParam will now consistently return a value that conforms to the ODBC specification. For more information, see SQLDescribeParam.

• ODBC Driver Behavior Change When Handling Character Conversions