Microsoft JDBC Driver 6.2 for SQL Server released

This post was authored by Andrea Lam, Program Manager, SQL Server

We are happy to announce the full release of the Microsoft JDBC Driver 6.2 for SQL Server. The JDBC Driver provides Java database connectivity from any Java application, application server or Java-enabled applet to Microsoft SQL Server, Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Data Warehouse. The driver is open source and available at no additional charge.

What’s new

Azure Active Directory (AAD) support for Linux
Connect your Linux applications to Azure SQL Database using AAD authentication via username/password and access token methods.

Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) enabled Java virtual machines
The JDBC Driver can now be used on Java virtual machines (JVMs) that run in FIPS 140 compliance mode to meet federal standards and compliance.

Kerberos Authentication Improvements
The JDBC Driver now has support for:

  • Principal/Password method for applications where the Kerberos configuration cannot be modified or is unable to retrieve a new token or keytab. This method can be used for authenticating to a SQL Server that only allows Kerberos authentication.
  • Cross-realm authentication using Kerberos integrated authentication without explicitly setting the server service principal name (SPN). The driver now automatically computes the REALM even when it has not been provided.
  • Kerberos constrained delegation by accepting impersonated user credentials as a GSS credential object via data source. This impersonated credential is then used to establish a Kerberos connection.

Added Timeouts
The JDBC driver now supports the following configurable timeouts you can change based on your application’s needs:

  • Query Timeout to control the number of seconds to wait before a timeout occurs when running a query
  • Socket Timeout to specify the number of milliseconds to wait before a timeout occurs on a socket read or accept

Get the latest JDBC jars

Note: Due to an issue found in the 6.2.0 release, some improvements were rolled back and new jars were uploaded to Maven and the Microsoft Download Center. Please use the 6.2.1 release jars instead.

Add the JDBC driver to your Maven project by adding the following code to your POM file:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.microsoft.sqlserver</groupId>
    <artifactId>mssql-jdbc</artifactId>
    <version>6.2.1.jre8</version>
</dependency>

You can also download the JDBC driver 6.2 jars directly from:

Help us improve the JDBC Driver by filing issues on GitHub or contributing to the project.

Resources

Get started quickly with Java and SQL Server on your platform of choice with our tutorials.

For more detailed documentation, check out the JDBC documentation here.

Stay tuned for upcoming releases that will have additional feature support. This applies to our wide range of client drivers including:

Be sure to also check out other open sourced community developed drivers including: