... albeit in 7 years.
But, in a weird turnaround - they've now decided that ODBC wasn't so bad after all. As such, the next release of SQL Server ("Denali") will be the last to support OLEDB and they will head back to using ODBC instead.
So, turns out (a) wasn't the right direction and (b) not as fast as they claimed and (c) was too complex for users to use. But, reading between the lines, is more to do with cloud/Azure than anything else.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlnativeclient/archive/2011/08/29/microsoft-is-aligning-with-odbc-for-nativ...
So, now the SLX Provider will need to revert back to interfacing with ODBC and Native Client for SQL Server will disappear. Oh the joys !
