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I am in the process of evaluating a whole whack of JDBC drivers, specifically to use with SQL Server 2008 with Windows authentication. I gathered a list of ones that I found and have listed them below.

My question is, are there any other JDBC drivers that are compatible with SQL Server 2008 that I should also look into reviewing?

  1. Microsoft JDBC driver

    URL: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/aa937724

    Pros: Official Microsoft JDBC driver for SQL Server 2008! Based on the JNetDirect JSQLConnect driver v3 as it was purchased by Microsoft a few years ago and they have been building on top of it since. I was told this by JNetDirect JSQLConnect's support.

    Cons: Seems to have a lot of connectivity/stability issues, don't believe me, just Google about it :). Doesn't have a way of disabling statement preparation/pooling which is something I am looking for.

    JDBC compliance: Claims to be be JDBC 4.0 compliant although many methods throw UnimplementedException!!!!

    JDBC Type: 4

    Price: Free

  2. Progress DataDirect

    URL: http://www.datadirect.com/index.html

    Pros: Claims to be top class, used by numerous applications like Informatica, etc and the company is been around for ages! Have quick support - I have dealt with them briefly.

    Cons: ?

    JDBC compliance: Claims to be be JDBC 4.0 compliant

    JDBC Type: 5

    Price: Not free

  3. JTDS

    URL: http://jtds.sourceforge.net/

    Pros: Much faster than the official Microsoft JDBC driver. Has a way of disabling prepared statements.

    Cons: ?

    JDBC compliance: JDBC 3.0 compliant only. This is a deal breaker for me because important methods like .validate() and .isClosed() aren't supported because these are JDBC 4.0 methods.

    JDBC Type: 4

    Price: Free - Open Source

  4. INET Merlia

    URL: http://www.inetsoftware.de/products/jdbc-driver/ms-sql/merlia

    Pros: Much faster than the official Microsoft JDBC driver. Has a way to disable prepared statements.

    Cons: ?

    JDBC compliance: Claims to be be JDBC 3.0/4.0 compliant

    JDBC Type: 4

    Price: Not free

  5. JNetDirect JSQLConnect

    URL: http://www.jnetdirect.com/products/jsqlconnect.html

    Pros: Much faster than the official Microsoft JDBC driver. Has a way to disable prepared statements

    Cons: ?

    JDBC compliance: Claims to be be JDBC 3.0/4.0 compliant

    JDBC Type: 4

    Price: Free for a single user with only 1 database connection.

If you can keep your comments clean, I'll happily update this post with any others.

Ayyoudy
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  • Do you have a hard requirement to deploy SQL Server? Otherwise you wouldn't evaluate drivers. – Michael-O Aug 04 '11 at 15:35
  • @Michael-O, yes actually. I have to work with the existing database and the option to switch to another database system isn't something that they are willing to consider at this point. So unfortunately, I still have to evaluate drivers for SQL Server. – Ayyoudy Aug 04 '11 at 15:37
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    @BenBrunk, couldn't agree with you more. I was shocked when 4 people voted to close it within minutes of it being posted... made no sense then, still makes no sense today. – Ayyoudy Feb 15 '12 at 23:27
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    I suspect the reason this question was closed was because it is not a question that has a specific answer. For comparison/list questions of this nature, answering "which should I use" is subjective depending on the project, and no answers given would be appropriate for all situations. Questions of this nature are expressly called out in the FAQ as [out of scope](http://stackoverflow.com/faq#dontask). – raveturned Apr 30 '12 at 12:10
  • This is probably better suited to ServerFault. – Jordan Reiter Jul 12 '13 at 20:46

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