17. Data Services

Today’s systems are disparate, and large enterprises have widely heterogeneous environments, with Windows and non-Windows platforms for application development. Developers, whether they’re enterprise developers, web developers, independent software vendor (ISV)) developers, or DBAs, have different needs and different ways of accessing the data that resides in SQL Server. For example, ISV developers look for stability in the platform, enterprise developers look for rich development tooling experience and interoperability, and web developers want the latest rich development experience. Similarly, what a PHP developer needs is very different from what a .NET developer needs. To achieve the rich development experience, developers can choose from various data access libraries such as ADO.NET, SQL Server 2014 Native Client (SNAC), JDBC, ODBC, and PHP, based on the application’s requirements. Since SQL Server 2000, the platform has supported interoperability with Windows and non-Windows environments. SQL Server 2000 started supporting Java development using JDBC drivers. PHP application development support was added to SQL Server with SQL Server 2005. With SQL Server 2014, support for ODBC driver for Linux has been added. This simplifies PHP or other application development on Linux to a greater extent.