In this short posting, I wanted to discuss two pieces of meat. One, the availability of the JDBC Drivers for SQL Server 2005 and how to get the bits, and Two, clear some of the confusion around the redist rights of the pre-release bits to your consumers.

Many of Microsoft's Global Independant Software Vendors (GISVs), customers and Enterprise IT shops rely on our JDBC Drivers for Microsoft SQL Server 2005. The original Release to Manufacturing(RTM) and General Availability(GA) plan for these drivers was at the launch of SQL Server 2005 last November 2005. However, our SQL Server division made a decision to delay the release of these drivers till at least Jan 18 2006. For those who are interested in getting the pre-release bits, we are making them available at this download site http://www.microsoft.com/sql/downloads/jdbc.mspx.

So, what does the delay in the RTM/GA mean to our GISVs, customers and Enterprise IT folks - it means two things - 1) They are having to push their products' RTM to sync with the driver's RTM and 2) During pre-release, they cannot/unable to redistribute these pre-release bits with their products and applications. Until the RTM/GA of these drivers, they must consider redirecting their end-customers, developers to our site http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/downloads/jdbceula.mspx, to agree to the EULA and download the bits thereafter. Microsoft realize that this is not the ideal situation to our partners especially and to that, we sincerely appreciate their patience in this matter.

At Microsoft, we understand that there are many speculations at large that say otherwise - that, we in fact allow the redist of these pre-release driver bits. But, the truth of the matter is, Microsoft has never allowed redist rights to anybody/company/entity on any of our pre-release bits in the past - period. So, this case is no different.

ciao
Nagi