Microsoft has added another item to their deprecation chopping block. It seems like they are focusing more on pairing down their software offerings and developer tools to a single trunk rather than adding branches to them. This time it is replacing OLE-DB with its older, less agile parent, ODBC. A roadmap which may not be the most current flavour is here.
ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) is a standard, platform-independent interface to databases. For years, ODBC has been shunned by SQL application developers in favor of OLE-DB, a faster, more object-oriented replacement. Many business users have been faced with the need to make sure their User DSNs or System DSNs are setup correctly when using Excel spreadsheets, Windows apps accessing databases, or Access linked databases. This headache was solved by utilizing the OLE-DB interface, which stored the connection string outside the ODBC Adminstrator box in Windows Control Panel and uses a more dynamic approach. This also removed some headaches for standardizing desktop configurations and making things more portable.
However, OLE-DB doesn't work in the cloud and MS has its head in the cloud right now.
There are pros and cons to using OLE-DB vs. ODBC, and apparently Microsoft has weighed in and decided the cons outweigh the pros, or at least there is no business justification for further investment in the technology, or they figure it's best to shove everyone screaming into the cloud.
What does this all mean? To me, it's sort of like getting rid of the Ford Mustang and replacing it with a Model T. Yes everyone has one, yes the parts are interchangeable and easy to fix, and yes it only comes in black, but is that a good thing if it only does 72km/h and gets flat tires every 3000km?
Pasted from <http://www.topspeed.com/cars/ford/1908-ford-model-t-ar32509.html>
Perhaps, if the Mustang had a faulty "Made in China" transmission...
If you're using OLE-DB for SQL Server to access a SQL database in your application, in 2018 this is no longer supported by Microsoft. This means many legacy apps will require retuning to operate with the ODBC drivers coming out of post SQL 2012 releases.
Other than Angry Geeks who need to change connection strings and rewrite code, who does this affect?
Customers who have long-term IT roadmaps will have to rethink their strategy in a couple of years. Who this may impact the most is those who invested in Analysis Services cubes and Integration Services ETL packages. These BI solutions don't play well with ODBC, and it's funny that MS is killing off something that really affects the SQL suite of products so dramatically.
Some comments from the developer community here and here.
So it's now ODBC in favour of OLE-DB, HTML5 in favour of Flash and Silverlight, Excel in favour of PerformancePoint Planning, Office Accounting, and Microsoft Money, Freecell in favour of Flight Simulator, Windows Metro on a tablet, phone or TV instead of Windows on a PC, and NASA balloons instead of manned Space Shuttles.
It seems Everything pre-2011 will be legacy in 2012 and MS will start with a clean slate, frustrating customers and developers in the process.
I have a box of discontinued Sidewinder joysticks if anyone is interested. Unfortunately you need a game port to USB adapter, which is probably more expensive than a USB joystick.
