SQL 2000 is not supported by the .NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server in VS2010 Server Explorer Data Connections

Question

I just tried creating a connection to the SQL 2000 database in VS2010 Server Explorer using the .NET Framework data provider for SQL Server (compared to OLE) and found that it was not working.

VS2010 complained that I had to use SQL Server 2005 and above.

This was used to work in VS2008 (using the .NET Framework data provider for SQL Server instead of the .NET Framework data provider for OLE DB).

Is it just a limitation of VS2010 or the ability to connect to SQL 2000 with the .NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server deprecated in version 2.0 used by VS2010 for .NET 2.0?

Does anyone know why this was done by MS (please do not speculate - I can do it myself;>)?

Answer 1

According to Jim Lewis of the Microsoft Visual Web Developer Team (via this post ), VS2010 has dropped support for SQL2000.

To quote a post:

A fault tolerant version of Visual Studio 2010 for SQL Server 2000. You will need to revert to VS2008 / SL3, upgrade SQL Server, or do something manually outside of Visual Studio.