The new AllowedOpenSSLVersions option allows you to determine which version of the OpenSSL library file the driver uses for data encryption. See AllowedOpenSSLVersions or Designating an OpenSSL Library for details.
The driver has been enhanced to support the Always Encrypted feature. Beginning with SQL Server 2016, Azure SQL and SQL Server databases support Always Encrypted, which allows sensitive data to be stored on the server in an encrypted state such that the data can only be decrypted by an authorized application. The following are highlights of this enhancement:
The driver detects all supported native data types in encrypted columns and transparently encrypts values bound to SQL parameters or decrypts values returned in results and output parameters.
The driver supports configurable caching of column encryption keys for improved performance.
The driver supports using Windows Certificate Store and Azure Key Vault as keystore providers.
The following Windows platforms have reached the end of their product lifecycle and are no longer supported by the driver:
Windows 8.0 (versions 8.1 and higher are still supported)
Windows Vista (all versions)
Windows XP (all versions)
Windows Server 2003 (all versions)
Changes for 8.0.2 GA
Platform Certifications
Certified with Red Hat Enterprise 7.3
Certified with Debian 7.11, 8.5
Certified with Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04
Certified with Windows Server 2016
Data Source Version Certifications
Certified with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics 12.00
Certified with Microsoft Analytics Platform System 10.00
Certified with Microsoft SQL Server 2016, 2017
Driver Enhancements
The driver has been enhanced to transparently connect to Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics and Microsoft Analytics Platform System data sources. See Support for Azure Synapse Analytics and Analytics Platform System for more information about supported features and functionality.
The driver has been enhanced to support connecting to a proxy server through an HTTP connection. HTTP proxy support is configurable with five new connection options. See Proxy Host, Proxy Mode, Proxy Password, Proxy Port, and Proxy User for details.
The new Enable Server Side Cursors connection option allows you to determine which server-side cursors are enabled for the data source. See Enable Server Side Cursors for details.
The driver is enhanced to support Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication. Azure AD authentication is an alternative to SQL Server Authentication for Azure SQL Database that allows you to centrally manage identities of database users. See Configuring Azure Active Directory Authentication for details.
The driver has been enhanced to support Always On Availability Groups. Introduced in SQL Server 2012, Always On Availability Groups is a replica-database environment that provides a high-level of data availability, protection, and recovery. To support this enhancement, the following updates have been made to the driver:
The new Multi-Subnet Failover option allows the driver to attempt parallel connections to all the IP addresses associated with an availability group when the primary listener is unavailable. This offers improved response time over traditional failover, which attempts connections to alternate servers one at a time. To support high availability with Always On, this option must be enabled.
The Host Name option has been updated to support the virtual network name (VNN) of the availability group listener as a valid value. To connect to an Always On Availability group, you must specify the VNN using this option.
The new Application Intent option allows you to control whether the driver requests read-only routing, thereby improving efficiency by reducing the workload on read-write nodes.
The default value for Crypto Protocol Version has been updated to TLSv1.2,TLSv1.1,TLSv1. This change improves the security of the driver by employing only the most secure cryptographic protocols as the default behavior. See Crypto Protocol Version for details.
Release Notes (includes the latest OpenSSL support information)