Microsoft's database releases from 2008 and 2010 reach end of extended support. In response, Redmond says, that for many customers, the time for cloud migration has arrived.

Probably in order to simplify development, the SQL Server, OleDB, and ODBC drivers were shipped in the same library as the System.Data framework itself.

Microsoft announced a new data access driver for SQL Server that should be the path forward for data developers in the era of .NET Core.