Microsoft SQL Server JDBC 3.0 CTP Release Announcement
Dear SQL Server developers and users:
On behalf of Microsoft SQL Server JDBC team I would like thank you for the valuable feedback and support on our Microsoft SQL Server JDBC driver. In response to your feedback since last year’s release of the Microsoft SQL Server 2.0 JDBC Driver, we are excited to announce the release of the Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver 3.0 Community Technology Preview (CTP), now available at the Microsoft Download Center. We have been hard at work on what you requested most, including support for the following features introduced in SQL Server 2008:
· MERGE (Transact-SQL) statement
· Large User-Defined Types (UDTs)
We have also fixed some bugs and made some performance improvements along the way.
Let us know how we’re doing and give us your feedback through the Microsoft SQL Server Data Access Forum, Microsoft Connect, or this blog.
Thank you,
Amina Saify, Program Manager - JDBC
Below is a high level overview of what’s new in this release:
1. Time and Date Data Types
We have added support for the following SQL Server data types – time, date, datetime2 and datetimeoffset
We are working on our next blog post which will go into details of Time and Date datatypes.
2. Sparse Columns
Sparse columns are ordinary columns that have an optimized storage for null values at the cost of more overhead to retrieve non-null values. Consider using sparse columns when the space saved is at least 20 percent to 40 percent.
The DatabaseMetaData methods: getColumns, getFunctionColumns, and getProcedureColumns now return information about whether a column is sparse as well as information about the column set column.
For additional information, see the Sparse Columns page of the documentation.
3. Large User-Defined Types (UDTs)
This release supports handling CLR User-Defined Types (UDTs) that are larger than 8000 bytes as binary data.
4. MERGE (Transact-SQL) Statement
We have added support for the MERGE (Transact-SQL) statement. The executeUpdate and getUpdateCount methods now return the correct number of rows updated for a MERGE statement.
For additional information about limitations retrieving the metadata of a parameterized query that includes a MERGE statement, see the driver release notes.
5. Metadata Enhancements
We have extended the metadata support to include the new data types introduced in SQL Server 2008.
a) Sparse columns information has been added to include sparse column
b) New date time metadata
Furthermore there are some minor changes from the 2.0 driver in the way some data types are reported.
6. Wrapper Interface Support
We have introduced interfaces that you can use with the unwrap and isWrapperFor methods of the Wrapper interface to implement classes that can proxy driver extensions to your applications.