SQL Server OLEDB Deprecation

Few days back I sent a tweet update on this matter using my twitter account @preethi_1965
For those who want to hear more on this, here there are few things:

Microsoft has officially announced that they are moving away from OLEDB. 
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlnativeclient/archive/2011/08/29/microsoft-is-aligning-with-odbc-for-native-relational-data-access.aspx
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sqldataaccess/thread/e696d0ac-f8e2-4b19-8a08-7a357d3d780f

There could be a couple of reasons behind it.

• SNAC OLEDB does not scale upt o the customer expectation
• ODBC is industry standard and It supports cross platform. To meet the complex market and technology needs, Microsoft needs to Maintain ODBC anyway. 
• Maintaining both OLEDB and ODBC at the same time providing new features is a difficult task.
• Interestingly, Initially Microsoft pushed for OLEDB as it can give a better performance over ODBC.  However, especially in 64 bit platforms, OLEDB didn't takeover.  According to insiders, OLEDB takes shorter paths, less code and provides better performance.    

With that said, SQL Server "Denali" most probably be the last version OLEDB.  As Denali CTP 3 is not yet feature complete, I expect another 6 to 12 months for the RTM to be released. It gives us space of another seven to ten years to change the code which uses OLEDB.  Until then we are rightfully expect Microsoft to support OLEDB.

Just a note, OLEDB is shipped in two forms. SNC(SQL Server Native Client) and MSOLAP. Microsoft is deprecating only the SNC OLEDB. OLEDB for other platforms will be supported continually. SSIS, SSRS and SSAS clients need not to be panicked. Especially SSIS is heavily depending on OLEDB currently and until something else is developed and in place for few years, it will be supported.

I saw an interesting article on  Impact of the SQL Server OLE DB Deprecation on Analysis Services.
Please have a look.