Microsoft released a new version of the JDBC driver for its SQLServer database engine. The new driver provides a Type 4 JDBC interface to the latest version of SQLServer, and supports JDK releases above 1.4:

In this release we re-architected the communication stack resulting in significant performance and scalability improvements, as well as minimizing the driver memory footprint usage, especially with multiple active connections and result sets. These enhancements are most visible when the "responseBuffering=adaptive" connection property is used. The driver now supports SQL Server SSL encryption as part of our continual commitment to security.

Additional features of this release include:

• Adaptive Buffering:

  The JDBC driver now provides an adaptive buffering feature, which is designed to retrieve any kind of large-value data without the overhead of server cursors.... The JDBC driver provides a new responseBuffering property and new streaming getter methods as part of this feature... The new getStream methods support the large value OUT parameters...

SSL Encryption:

The JDBC driver now provides Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption to secure the communication channel with SQL Server database... The JDBC driver provides new connection properties and new getter and setter methods as part of this feature. New connection properties are: encrypt, trustServerCertificate, trustStore, trustStorePassword, and hostNameInCertificate.

• Tightly Coupled XA Transactions:
  

  The JDBC driver now provides a SSTRANSTIGHTLYCPLD flag to allow the applications to use the tightly coupled XA transactions, which have different XA branch transaction IDs (XIDs) but have the same global transaction ID (GTRID).

What do you think of SQLServer as a database for enterprise Java applications?