SQL 2000 Not Supported by .NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server in VS2010's Server Explorer Data Connections

Question

Just tried creating a data connection to a SQL 2000 database in VS2010's Server Explorer using a .NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server (versus OLE) and found that it didn't work.

VS2010 complained that I had to use SQL Server 2005 and up.

This used to work in VS2008 (using .NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server instead of the .NET Framework Data Provider for OLE DB).

Is this just a VS2010 restriction or has the ability to connect to SQL 2000 with .NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server been obsoleted in a post-2.0 version of .NET being used by VS2010?

Anyone know why this was done by MS (please don't speculate - I can do that myself ;>)?

Answer 1

According with Jim Lewis from Microsoft Visual Web Developer Team (via this post) VS2010 dropped support for SQL2000.

To quote the post:

Visual Studio 2010 dropped support for SQL Server 2000. You'll either have to go back to VS2008/SL3, upgrade your SQL Server, or do things manually outside of Visual Studio.