ODBC is In. OLE DB is Out.
Do you remember ODBC, OLE DB and DAO days before ADO and
ADO.NET took over the world? I remember VB 4 and MFC days where DAO and ODBC
were the ways to connect with any database. Then ADO.NET was introduced as a
part of .NET framework and out of sudden, DAO and ODBC disappeared.
Guess what? Microsoft is bringing back the native ODBC
support in the next version of SQL Server, probably SQL Server 2012. ODBC is
already supported by SQL Azure.
In a blog
published by SQL Server team member, Rohan Lam, program manager, SQL Server
Connectivity says, that the next version of SQL Server, codename “Denali”, will
be the last version of SQL Server that will support OLE DB. OLE DB will be
supported for 7 years from launch. So you should be ready to migrate from OLE
DB to ODBC.
He also mentioned that they encourage all users to adopt
ODBC in development for their new and future versions of the applications.