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118-505: The first version of MDAC was released in August 1996. At that time Microsoft stated MDAC was more a concept than a stand-alone program and had no widespread distribution method. Later Microsoft released upgrades to MDAC as web-based redistributable packages. Eventually, later versions were integrated with Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer , and in MDAC 2.8 SP1 they ceased offering MDAC as

236-741: A web browser . The new service is an attempt at capitalizing on the growing trend, fostered during the COVID-19 pandemic , for businesses to adopt a hybrid remote work environment, in which "employees split their time between the office and home". As the service will be accessible through web browsers, Microsoft will be able to bypass the need to publish the service through Google Play or the Apple App Store . Microsoft announced Windows 365 availability to business and enterprise customers on August 2, 2021. Multilingual support has been built into Windows since Windows 3.0. The language for both

354-475: A .NET Managed Provider, a modified version of an OLE DB provider specifically designed for .NET. The object structure is no longer built around a Recordset object. Instead a Dataset object is used to contain data gathered from multiple sources. This is transparent to the programmer. Unlike the old ADO Recordset, the Dataset's design promotes the use of disconnected data. Conceptually, a Dataset object can be seen as

472-550: A change which Microsoft promised would provide better performance over its DOS-based predecessors. Windows XP would also introduce a redesigned user interface (including an updated Start menu and a "task-oriented" Windows Explorer ), streamlined multimedia and networking features, Internet Explorer 6 , integration with Microsoft's .NET Passport services, a " compatibility mode " to help provide backwards compatibility with software designed for previous versions of Windows, and Remote Assistance functionality. At retail, Windows XP

590-669: A conflict could arise that caused the OLE DB Session Pooling to run at 100% CPU usage. This was later fixed. Microsoft published a full list of bugs fixed in MDAC 2.5 Service Pack 2 and MDAC 2.5 Service Pack 3 . A security vulnerability also existed (later fixed) whereby an unchecked buffer was found in the SQL Server Driver. This flaw was introduced in MDAC 2.5 SP2. MDAC 2.6 was released in September 2000 and

708-399: A convenient level of indirection . Additionally, the dialog box specifies a number of alternate OLE DB data providers for a variety of target applications. Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a native interface that is accessed through a programming language (usually C ) that can make calls into a native library . In MDAC this interface is defined as a DLL. A separate module or driver

826-681: A coordinated, stand-alone setup program." The MDAC 1.0 stack consisted of ODBC 3.0, OLE DB 1.1, ADO 1.0, and the Advanced Data Connector (ADC) 1.0 – which according to Microsoft was the precursor to the Remote Data Service of MDAC 1.5. It also included ODBC drivers for Access/Jet, SQL Server and Oracle databases. MDAC 1.0 was released via several mechanisms: the Advanced Data Connector shipped with Internet Information Server (IIS) 3.0 and as

944-544: A downloadable cab file ; OLE DB 1.1 and ADO 1.0 shipped with the OLE DB 1.1 SDK, which came with Visual Studio 97 and was also downloadable. MDAC 1.0 came with Active Server Pages, that itself came in IIS 3.0, and also came with Visual InterDev 1.0. MDAC 1.5 was released between September 1997 and March 1998, and involved a more centralised distribution mechanism than MDAC 1.0. It was released with Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0,

1062-447: A downloadable component and will support it on their 64-bit operating systems. Several components have been completely removed from MDAC by Microsoft and are no longer supported. They are: Microsoft has released several versions of MDAC over time. The distribution method has varied and the feature-set is different for each version. MDAC 1.0 was first released in August 1996. According to Microsoft, "MDAC 1.0 existed more as concept than

1180-449: A drawback in that if the process crashes and fails to clean up shared memory it will stay until system shutdown; that limitation is not present in an Android-specific implementation dubbed ashmem . POSIX also provides the mmap API for mapping files into memory; a mapping can be shared, allowing the file's contents to be used as shared memory. Linux distributions based on the 2.6 kernel and later offer /dev/shm as shared memory in

1298-513: A large number of new features, Windows 7 was intended to be a more focused, incremental upgrade to the Windows line, with the goal of being compatible with applications and hardware with which Windows Vista was already compatible. Windows 7 has multi-touch support, a redesigned Windows shell with an updated taskbar with revealable jump lists that contain shortcuts to files frequently used with specific applications and shortcuts to tasks within

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1416-610: A modular, portable kernel with preemptive multitasking and support for multiple processor architectures. However, following the successful release of Windows 3.0 , the NT development team decided to rework the project to use an extended 32-bit port of the Windows API known as Win32 instead of those of OS/2. Win32 maintained a similar structure to the Windows APIs (allowing existing Windows applications to easily be ported to

1534-400: A new Windows 365 service in the following month. The new service will allow for cross-platform usage , aiming to make the operating system available for both Apple and Android users. It is a separate service and offers several variations including Windows 365 Frontline, Windows 365 Boot, and the Windows 365 app. The subscription service will be accessible through any operating system with

1652-579: A program called "Interface Manager". The name "Windows" comes from the fact that the system was one of the first to use graphical boxes to represent programs; in the industry, at the time, these were called "windows" and the underlying software was called "windowing software." It was announced in November 1983 (after the Apple Lisa , but before the Macintosh ) under the name "Windows", but Windows 1.0

1770-510: A redesigned, object oriented user interface, replacing the previous Program Manager with the Start menu , taskbar , and Windows Explorer shell . Windows 95 was a major commercial success for Microsoft; Ina Fried of CNET remarked that "by the time Windows 95 was finally ushered off the market in 2001, it had become a fixture on computer desktops around the world." Microsoft published four OEM Service Releases (OSR) of Windows 95, each of which

1888-451: A redistributable package. Throughout its history, MDAC has been the subject of several security flaws , which led to attacks such as an escalated privileges attack , although the vulnerabilities were generally fixed in later versions and fairly promptly. The current version is 2.8 service pack 1, but the product has had many different versions and many of its components have been deprecated and replaced by newer Microsoft technologies. MDAC

2006-527: A region of a file into memory in multiple processes. Some C++ libraries provide a portable and object-oriented access to shared memory functionality. For example, Boost contains the Boost.Interprocess C++ Library and Qt provides the QSharedMemory class. For programming languages with POSIX bindings (say, C/C++), shared memory regions can be created and accessed by calling the functions provided by

2124-472: A security vulnerability that results because one of the ODBC functions in MDAC that is used to connect to data sources contained an unchecked buffer. Another vulnerability that was fixed was one whereby an attacker could respond to an SQL Server discovery message broadcast by clients with a specially crafted packet that could cause a buffer overflow. Another flaw was found whereby code could be executed remotely when

2242-400: A similar set of issues. In computer software, shared memory is either Since both processes can access the shared memory area like regular working memory, this is a very fast way of communication (as opposed to other mechanisms of IPC such as named pipes , Unix domain sockets or CORBA ). On the other hand, it is less scalable, as for example the communicating processes must be running on

2360-461: A single interface that other software could use to access Microsoft databases. Jet also provided support for security, referential integrity , transaction processing , indexing , record and page locking, and data replication. In later versions of Jet, the engine was extended to run SQL queries, store character data in Unicode format, create views , and allowed bi-directional replication with

2478-467: A single processor or on multiple separate processors. Using memory for communication inside a single program, e.g. among its multiple threads , is also referred to as shared memory. In computer hardware, shared memory refers to a (typically large) block of random access memory (RAM) that can be accessed by several different central processing units (CPUs) in a multiprocessor computer system . Shared memory systems may use: A shared memory system

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2596-532: A small in-memory relational database in its own right that allows for manipulation of data in any direction. In order to propagate changes back into the database, a DataAdapter object is used that transfers data from between the data source and the DataSet object. Cursors were also deprecated in ADO.NET, being replaced with a DataReader object, which is used to efficiently process a large list of results one record at

2714-465: A special version with integrated peer-to-peer networking features and a version number of 3.11, was released. It was sold along with Windows 3.1. Support for Windows 3.1 ended on December 31, 2001. Windows 3.2, released in 1994, is an updated version of the Chinese version of Windows 3.1. The update was limited to this language version, as it fixed only issues related to the complex writing system of

2832-543: A specific base language and are commonly used for more popular languages such as French or Chinese. These languages cannot be downloaded through the Download Center, but are available as optional updates through the Windows Update service (except Windows 8). The interface language of installed applications is not affected by changes in the Windows interface language. The availability of languages depends on

2950-416: A successor to NT 4.0. The Windows NT name was dropped at this point in order to put a greater focus on the Windows brand. The next major version of Windows NT, Windows XP , was released to manufacturing (RTM) on August 24, 2001, and to the general public on October 25, 2001. The introduction of Windows XP aimed to unify the consumer-oriented Windows 9x series with the architecture introduced by Windows NT,

3068-455: A time without storing them. MDAC is a continually evolving component framework. As such, there have been several components that were previously part of it but have since been deprecated or removed entirely from the framework. Jet stands for Joint Engine Technology and was a database engine used for Microsoft Access , Microsoft Exchange Server and Visual Basic . Jet was part of a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) and offered

3186-549: Is a product line of proprietary graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft . It is grouped into families and sub-families that cater to particular sectors of the computing industry – Windows (unqualified) for a consumer or corporate workstation , Windows Server for a server and Windows IoT for an embedded system . Windows is sold as either a consumer retail product or licensed to third-party hardware manufacturers who sell products bundled with Windows. The first version of Windows, Windows 1.0 ,

3304-434: Is a high-level programming interface to OLE DB. It uses a hierarchical object model to allow applications to programmatically create, retrieve, update and delete data from sources supported by OLE DB. ADO consists of a series of hierarchical COM-based objects and collections, an object that acts as a container of many other objects. A programmer can directly access ADO objects to manipulate data, or can send an SQL query to

3422-446: Is almost entirely functionally equivalent to MDAC 2.8." There are two ways of checking the version of MDAC that is installed on a computer. For Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, one way to check is via Microsoft's Component Checker program, which compares the value of each installed MDAC DLL to the MDAC file manifest. The second way is to check the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\DataAccess\FullInstallVer in

3540-435: Is an edition of Windows that runs on minimalistic computers , like satellite navigation systems and some mobile phones. Windows Embedded Compact is based on its own dedicated kernel, dubbed Windows CE kernel. Microsoft licenses Windows CE to OEMs and device makers. The OEMs and device makers can modify and create their own user interfaces and experiences, while Windows CE provides the technical foundation to do so. Windows CE

3658-450: Is an unofficial name given to the version of Windows that runs on Xbox consoles. From Xbox One onwards it is an implementation with an emphasis on virtualization (using Hyper-V ) as it is three operating systems running at once, consisting of the core operating system , a second implemented for games and a more Windows-like environment for applications. Microsoft updates Xbox One's OS every month, and these updates can be downloaded from

Microsoft Data Access Components - Misplaced Pages Continue

3776-773: Is conceptually divided into consumers and providers . The consumers are the applications that need access to the data, and the provider is the software component that exposes an OLE DB interface through the use of the Component Object Model (or COM). OLE DB is the database access interface technology used by MDAC. OLE DB providers can be created to access such simple data stores as a text file or spreadsheet , through to such complex databases as Oracle and SQL Server . However, because different data store technology can have different capabilities, OLE DB providers may not implement every possible interface available. The capabilities that are available are implemented through

3894-550: Is needed for each database that must be accessed. The functions in the ODBC API are implemented by these DBMS-specific drivers. The driver that Microsoft provides in MDAC is called the SQL Server ODBC Driver (SQLODBC), and (as the name implies) is designed for Microsoft's SQL Server. It supports SQL Server v6.5 and upwards. ODBC allows programs to use SQL requests that will access databases without having to know

4012-510: Is not supported on Windows 98 or Windows Me. OLE DB (also called OLEDB or OLE-DB) allows MDAC applications access to different types of data stores in a uniform manner. Microsoft has used this technology to separate the application from data can store in the website the data store that it needs to access. This was done because different applications need access to different types and sources of data, and do not necessarily need to know how to access technology-specific functionality. The technology

4130-554: Is now an official component of the Microsoft's operating system, though they will be providing ongoing bug and security fixes to previously released versions of the web-distributable version. However, Microsoft have created a new component called the SQL Native Client (SQLNCLI), which is a stand-alone data access API that has combined the OLE DB and ODBC libraries into one DLL. It was formed to be independent of MDAC, which

4248-542: Is now known as Windows DAC in Windows Vista . The latest version of MDAC (2.8) consists of several interacting components, all of which are Windows specific except for ODBC (which is available on several platforms). MDAC architecture may be viewed as three layers: a programming interface layer, consisting of ADO and ADO.NET , a database access layer developed by database vendors such as Oracle and Microsoft ( OLE DB , .NET managed providers and ODBC drivers), and

4366-927: Is now reliant on the state the operating system is in – a developer now links to this library and avoids situations where an update of the operating system which updates MDAC breaks applications built to a different version of MDAC. Windows 7 SP1 has broken forward compatibility of MDAC 2.8. Software compiled on Windows 7 SP1 that relies on MDAC ADO will not work on Windows versions prior to Windows 7 SP1 (including Windows 7 RTM, Vista, XP). Microsoft has provided solutions to work around this issue for some applications but VBA applications remain affected. The fix for this issue has been release in February 2012. Windows Vista will no longer use MDAC, but instead use Windows DAC, which consists of updated versions of ADO, OLE DB, and ODBC components. According to Microsoft, "Windows DAC includes some changes to work with Windows Vista, but

4484-512: Is of course impossible because you would then have a negative context switch rate - the drop is either 33% or 60% depending on which planet the author was on at the time of writing) for a 10-user workload. They were unimpressed that a fundamental functional change to the default behaviour of Net-Lib occurred without more than a passing mention in an unrelated document. Windows XP users also sometimes experienced problems connecting to SQL Server because SQL Server attempts to use certificates it finds on

4602-436: Is relatively easy to program since all processors share a single view of data and the communication between processors can be as fast as memory accesses to the same location. The issue with shared memory systems is that many CPUs need fast access to memory and will likely cache memory , which has two complications: Technologies like crossbar switches , Omega networks , HyperTransport or front-side bus can be used to dampen

4720-529: Is said to be available to update from qualified Windows 7 with SP1, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 devices from the Get Windows 10 Application (for Windows 7 , Windows 8.1 ) or Windows Update ( Windows 7 ). In February 2017, Microsoft announced the migration of its Windows source code repository from Perforce to Git . This migration involved 3.5 million separate files in a 300-gigabyte repository. By May 2017, 90 percent of its engineering team

4838-573: Is the most popular desktop operating system in the world, with a 70% market share as of March 2023 , according to StatCounter ; however when including mobile OS es, it is not the most used, in favor of Android . As of today, the most recent version of Windows is Windows 11 for consumer PCs and tablets , Windows 11 Enterprise for corporations, and Windows Server 2025 for servers. Still supported are some editions of Windows 10 , Windows Server 2016 or later (and exceptionally with paid support down to Windows Server 2008 ). As of today,

Microsoft Data Access Components - Misplaced Pages Continue

4956-499: Is the OLE DB provider that Microsoft provides for the Microsoft SQL Server from version 6.5 upwards. Universal data link files (or '.udl files') provide a common user interface for specifying connection attributes. A user can use a Data Link Properties dialog box to save connection information in a .udl file as an alternative to directly specifying them by hand in a connection string. Consequently, these files provide

5074-447: Is the last Windows client operating system to support Itanium. Windows Server line continues to support this platform until Windows Server 2012 ; Windows Server 2008 R2 is the last Windows operating system to support Itanium architecture. On April 25, 2005, Microsoft released Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003 x64 editions to support x86-64 (or simply x64), the 64-bit version of x86 architecture. Windows Vista

5192-585: The Start screen , which uses large tiles that are more convenient for touch interactions and allow for the display of continually updated information, and a new class of apps which are designed primarily for use on touch-based devices. The new Windows version required a minimum resolution of 1024×768 pixels, effectively making it unfit for netbooks with 800×600-pixel screens. Other changes include increased integration with cloud services and other online platforms (such as social networks and Microsoft's own OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) and Xbox Live services),

5310-974: The Windows Driver Model , support for USB composite devices , support for ACPI , hibernation , and support for multi-monitor configurations. Windows 98 also included integration with Internet Explorer 4 through Active Desktop and other aspects of the Windows Desktop Update (a series of enhancements to the Explorer shell which was also made available for Windows 95). In May 1999, Microsoft released Windows 98 Second Edition , an updated version of Windows 98. Windows 98 SE added Internet Explorer 5.0 and Windows Media Player 6.2 amongst other upgrades. Mainstream support for Windows 98 ended on June 30, 2002, and extended support for Windows 98 ended on July 11, 2006. On September 14, 2000, Microsoft released Windows Me (Millennium Edition),

5428-505: The Windows Image Acquisition framework for retrieving images from scanners and digital cameras), additional system utilities such as System File Protection and System Restore , and updated home networking tools. However, Windows Me was faced with criticism for its speed and instability, along with hardware compatibility issues and its removal of real mode DOS support. PC World considered Windows Me to be one of

5546-516: The Windows NT operating system line's Win32 subsystem . The SQL Server Network Library is controlled through the use of a Client Network Utility, which is bundled with the SQL Server. Each Net-Lib supported network protocol has a separate driver (not to be confused with a device driver ), and has support for a session layer in its protocol stack. There are two general types of Net-Lib:

5664-578: The Windows Store service for software distribution, and a new variant known as Windows RT for use on devices that utilize the ARM architecture , and a new keyboard shortcut for screenshots . An update to Windows 8, called Windows 8.1 , was released on October 17, 2013, and includes features such as new live tile sizes, deeper OneDrive integration, and many other revisions. Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have been subject to some criticism, such as

5782-668: The Windows registry . Microsoft notes that this information may be incorrect for versions of MDAC prior to 2.1 when compared with the versions of the MDAC files installed to the system No bulletins released 1.5 Microsoft Windows 24H2 (10.0.26100.2454) (November 21, 2024 ; 7 days ago  ( 2024-11-21 ) ) [±] 23H2 (10.0.22635.4515) (November 22, 2024 ; 6 days ago  ( 2024-11-22 ) ) [±] 24H2 (10.0.26120.2415) (November 22, 2024 ; 6 days ago  ( 2024-11-22 ) ) [±] Microsoft Windows

5900-451: The x86 -based personal computer became dominant in the professional world. Windows NT 4.0 and its predecessors supported PowerPC , DEC Alpha and MIPS R4000 (although some of the platforms implement 64-bit computing , the OS treated them as 32-bit). Windows 2000 dropped support for all platforms, except the third generation x86 (known as IA-32 ) or newer in 32-bit mode. The client line of

6018-446: The "Tablet PC" edition (designed for mobile devices meeting its specifications for a tablet computer , with support for stylus pen input and additional pen-enabled applications). Mainstream support for Windows XP ended on April 14, 2009. Extended support ended on April 8, 2014. After Windows 2000, Microsoft also changed its release schedules for server operating systems; the server counterpart of Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 ,

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6136-679: The C development environment, which included numerous windows samples. Windows 2.0 was released in December 1987, and was more popular than its predecessor. It features several improvements to the user interface and memory management. Windows 2.03 changed the OS from tiled windows to overlapping windows. The result of this change led to Apple Computer filing a suit against Microsoft alleging infringement on Apple's copyrights (eventually settled in court in Microsoft's favor in 1993). Windows 2.0 also introduced more sophisticated keyboard shortcuts and could make use of expanded memory . Windows 2.1

6254-589: The Chinese language. Windows 3.2 was generally sold by computer manufacturers with a ten-disk version of MS-DOS that also had Simplified Chinese characters in basic output and some translated utilities. The next major consumer-oriented release of Windows, Windows 95 , was released on August 24, 1995. While still remaining MS-DOS-based, Windows 95 introduced support for native 32-bit applications , plug and play hardware, preemptive multitasking , long file names of up to 255 characters, and provided increased stability over its predecessors. Windows 95 also introduced

6372-506: The IStream object returned by CoMarshalInterThreadInterfaceInStream in the COM libraries under Windows . Dynamic libraries are generally held in memory once and mapped to multiple processes, and only pages that had to be customized for the individual process (because a symbol resolved differently there) are duplicated, usually with a mechanism known as copy-on-write that transparently copies

6490-481: The Internet Client SDK 4.0 and through a CD-ROM given out at the 1997 Professional Developers Conference (PDC). There were five versions of MDAC 1.5: The different versions of MDAC 1.5 consisted of: This version of MDAC had a security flaw that made it vulnerable to an escalated privileges attack . The vulnerability caused systems that had both IIS and MDAC installed to give an unauthorized web user

6608-549: The MSDASQL component for their 64-bit operating systems and the Microsoft Oracle ODBC driver was later superseded by a .NET Managed Oracle Provider, which supported Oracle 9i. However, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 ship with a 64-bit version of MSDASQL. Remote Data Services (RDS) allowed the retrieval of a set of data from the server, which the client then altered in some way and then sent back to

6726-744: The Microsoft SQL Server. It was superseded by MSDE which was superseded SQL Server Express . There were three modules to Jet. One was the Native Jet ISAM Driver , a Jet dynamic link library (DLL) that could directly manipulate Microsoft Access database files (MDB), which was a modified form of an Indexed Sequential Access Method (ISAM) database. Another one of the modules were the ISAM Drivers , DLLs that allowed access to ISAM databases, among them being Xbase , Paradox , Btrieve and FoxPro files. The final module

6844-489: The POSIX:XSI Extension) includes the shared-memory functions shmat , shmctl , shmdt and shmget . Unix System V provides an API for shared memory as well. This uses shmget from sys/shm.h. BSD systems provide "anonymous mapped memory" which can be used by several processes. The shared memory created by shm_open is persistent. It stays in the system until explicitly removed by a process. This has

6962-588: The Windows NT family still ran on IA-32 up to Windows 10 (the server line of the Windows NT family still ran on IA-32 up to Windows Server 2008 ). With the introduction of the Intel Itanium architecture ( IA-64 ), Microsoft released new versions of Windows to support it. Itanium versions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 were released at the same time as their mainstream x86 counterparts. Windows XP 64-Bit Edition (Version 2003), released in 2003,

7080-430: The Windows interface, and require a certain base language (the language which Windows originally shipped with). This is used for most languages in emerging markets. Full Language Packs, which translate the complete operating system, are only available for specific editions of Windows (Ultimate and Enterprise editions of Windows Vista and 7, and all editions of Windows 8, 8.1 and RT except Single Language). They do not require

7198-620: The Xbox 360's system is backwards compatible with the original Xbox. Up to and including every version before Windows 2000 , Microsoft used an in-house version control system named Source Library Manager (SLM). Shortly after Windows 2000 was released, Microsoft switched to a fork of Perforce named Source Depot. This system was used up until 2017 once the system could not keep up with the size of Windows. Microsoft had begun to integrate Git into Team Foundation Server in 2013, but Windows (and Office) continued to rely on Source Depot. The Windows code

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7316-527: The Xbox Live service to the Xbox and subsequently installed, or by using offline recovery images downloaded via a PC. It was originally based on NT 6.2 (Windows 8) kernel, and the latest version runs on an NT 10.0 base. This system is sometimes referred to as "Windows 10 on Xbox One". Xbox One and Xbox Series operating systems also allow limited (due to licensing restrictions and testing resources) backward compatibility with previous generation hardware, and

7434-478: The ability to execute shell commands on the IIS system as a privileged user. This allowed the attacker to use MDAC to tunnel SQL and other ODBC data requests through the public connection to a private back-end network when on a multi-homed Internet-connected IIS system. It also allowed the user to gain unauthorized access to secured, non-published files on the IIS system MDAC 1.5 was the last data access component release supported under Windows NT 3.51 SP5. MDAC 2.0

7552-403: The application developers themselves. Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 introduce a new Language Control Panel where both the interface and input languages can be simultaneously changed, and language packs, regardless of type, can be downloaded from a central location. The PC Settings app in Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 also includes a counterpart settings page for this. Changing

7670-437: The application, a home networking system called HomeGroup , and performance improvements. Windows 8 , the successor to Windows 7, was released generally on October 26, 2012. A number of significant changes were made on Windows 8, including the introduction of a user interface based around Microsoft's Metro design language with optimizations for touch-based devices such as tablets and all-in-one PCs. These changes include

7788-410: The attacker responded to the broadcast with another specially crafted packet. MDAC 2.8 was released in August 2003 and distributed with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 , as well as on Microsoft's Data Access Technologies website. It did not introduce any new features to the product but fixed a number of bugs and security issues – a reg file (automates changes to the registry) was removed that made

7906-576: The bottleneck-effects. In case of a Heterogeneous System Architecture (processor architecture that integrates different types of processors, such as CPUs and GPUs , with shared memory), the memory management unit (MMU) of the CPU and the input–output memory management unit (IOMMU) of the GPU have to share certain characteristics, like a common address space. The alternatives to shared memory are distributed memory and distributed shared memory , each having

8024-506: The choice of writing applications which directly access OLE DB and ODBC. The Microsoft SQL Server Network Library (also known as Net-Lib) is used by the Microsoft SQL Server to read and write data using many different network protocols . Though Net-Lib is specific to the SQL Server, Microsoft includes it with MDAC. The SQL Server uses the Open Data Services (ODS) library to communicate with Net-Lib, which interfaces directly with

8142-511: The cluster, directly or through the installation of another program, it may cause a catastrophic failure of the SQL Server Agent or other SQL Server services." This issue affected Veritas Software 's Backup Exec 9.0 for Windows Servers, because it installs Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000) as its database. Revision 4367 installed MDAC version 2.6 SP2 while revision 4454 installed MDAC version 2.7 SP1, which did not have

8260-581: The database itself. These component layers are all made available to applications through the MDAC API . The Microsoft SQL Server Network Library, a proprietary access method specific to Microsoft SQL Server, is also included in the MDAC. Developers of Windows applications are encouraged to use ADO or ADO.NET for data access, the benefit being that users of the application program are not constrained in their choice of database architecture except that it should be supported by MDAC. Naturally, developers still have

8378-466: The database via several ADO mechanisms. ADO is made up of nine objects and four collections . The collections are: The objects are: ADO.NET is the latest version of ADO (after ADO 2.8, now often referred to as ADO Classic) and is part of the MDAC 2.8 stack alongside classic ADO. It is built around Microsoft .NET . Though sometimes seen as an evolutionary step up from ADO, some fundamental structural changes were made by Microsoft. ADO.NET runs through

8496-409: The design, mostly because of virtual memory and loadable virtual device drivers ( VxDs ) that allow Windows to share arbitrary devices between multi-tasked DOS applications. Windows 3.0 applications can run in protected mode , which gives them access to several megabytes of memory without the obligation to participate in the software virtual memory scheme. They run inside the same address space, where

8614-475: The form of a RAM disk , more specifically as a world-writable directory (a directory in which every user of the system can create files) that is stored in memory. Both the RedHat and Debian based distributions include it by default. Support for this type of RAM disk is completely optional within the kernel configuration file . On Windows, one can use CreateFileMapping and MapViewOfFile functions to map

8732-653: The full Data Access SDK. MDAC 2.1 was distributed with SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 6.5 SP5. MDAC 2.1 SP1 was distributed with Internet Explorer 5 and MDAC 2.1 SP1a (GA) was distributed with Microsoft Office 2000, BackOffice 4.5 and Visual Studio 98 SP3. However, none of these versions of MDAC were released to the general public via the World Wide Web . MDAC 2.1 SP2 was distributed from Microsoft's website. The components that were included with 2.1 were: This version had security vulnerabilities whereby an unchecked buffer could allow an elevated privileges attack. This

8850-516: The full Windows feature set. The early versions of Windows are often thought of as graphical shells, mostly because they ran on top of MS-DOS and used it for file system services. However, even the earliest Windows versions already assumed many typical operating system functions; notably, having their own executable file format and providing their own device drivers (timer, graphics, printer, mouse, keyboard and sound). Unlike MS-DOS, Windows allowed users to execute multiple graphical applications at

8968-436: The interface language also changes the language of preinstalled Windows Store apps (such as Mail, Maps and News) and certain other Microsoft-developed apps (such as Remote Desktop). The above limitations for language packs are however still in effect, except that full language packs can be installed for any edition except Single Language, which caters to emerging markets. Windows NT included support for several platforms before

9086-515: The keyboard and the interface can be changed through the Region and Language Control Panel. Components for all supported input languages, such as Input Method Editors , are automatically installed during Windows installation (in Windows XP and earlier, files for East Asian languages, such as Chinese, and files for right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic, may need to be installed separately, also from

9204-433: The last DOS-based version of Windows. Windows Me incorporated visual interface enhancements from its Windows NT-based counterpart Windows 2000 , had faster boot times than previous versions (which however, required the removal of the ability to access a real mode DOS environment, removing compatibility with some older programs), expanded multimedia functionality (including Windows Media Player 7, Windows Movie Maker , and

9322-578: The local computer, however if there is more than one certificate available it did not know which one to use. When attempting to use Microsoft Analysis Services 2000 RTM, an error would sometimes appear when trying to browse cubes. Microsoft also discovered a problem in Windows 95 , Windows 98 , and Windows Me 's setup program which prevented the MDAC installation program from rolling back when it encountered an installation error. Several security issues were resolved by Microsoft for MDAC 2.7. David Litchfield of Next Generation Security Software Ltd reported

9440-586: The network library protocol might unexpectedly switch to TCP/IP , even if the DSN was configured to use named pipes . This issue was found by InfoWorld reporter Randall C. Kennedy , who identified that the change was actually made in MDAC 2.6 but was never documented. It was discovered when testing client/server database workloads on a Windows XP computer; InfoWorld claims that although overall server CPU utilization rose by only 8 percent using TCP/IP, context switches per second dropped by more than 150 percent (which

9558-622: The only active top-level family is Windows NT . The first version, Windows NT 3.1 , was intended for server computing and corporate workstations . It grew into a product line of its own and now consists of four sub-families that tend to be released almost simultaneously and share the same kernel. These top-level Windows families are no longer actively developed: The term Windows collectively describes any or all of several generations of Microsoft operating system products. These products are generally categorized as follows: The history of Windows dates back to 1981 when Microsoft started work on

9676-417: The operating system does not allow any other process access to the instances' area of shared memory. Net-Lib is also able to support the impersonation of a logged in user's security context for protocols that support authenticated connections (called trusted connections ). This allows Net-Lib to provide an integrated logon authentication mechanism via the use of Windows Authentication . Windows Authentication

9794-465: The page when a write is attempted, and then lets the write succeed on the private copy. Compared to multiple address space operating systems, memory sharing -- especially of sharing procedures or pointer-based structures -- is simpler in single address space operating systems . POSIX provides a standardized API for using shared memory, POSIX Shared Memory . This uses the function shm_open from sys/mman.h. POSIX interprocess communication (part of

9912-403: The platform), but also supported the capabilities of the existing NT kernel . Following its approval by Microsoft's staff, development continued on what was now Windows NT, the first 32-bit version of Windows. However, IBM objected to the changes, and ultimately continued OS/2 development on its own. Windows NT was the first Windows operating system based on a hybrid kernel . The hybrid kernel

10030-594: The primary and the secondary. The primary Net-Lib consists of a Super Socket Net-Lib and the Shared Memory Net-Lib, while there are numerous secondary Net-Libs, including TCP/IP and named pipes network libraries (named pipes are a method of communicating with other processes via a system-persistent pipeline that is given an identity). The Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server (SQLOLEDB) communicates via primary Net-Libs. The Super Socket Net-Lib deals with inter-computer communications and coordinates

10148-684: The problem MDAC 2.7 was released in October 2001 through Microsoft's website. A refresh release was issued in April 2002 through the release of Windows XP and through Microsoft's website. Version 2.7 was available in U.S. English , Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), German, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese , Czech , Danish, Greek, Slovak , Slovenian , Spanish, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Dutch , Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, and Turkish . Hebrew and Arabic were only available through Windows XP. The main feature change

10266-530: The proprietary interfaces to the databases. It handles the SQL request and converts it into a request that the individual database system understands. According to Microsoft, "After SQL Server 2012, the ODBC driver will be updated for the most recent server features, including Microsoft Windows Azure SQL Database, and released as the Microsoft ODBC Driver for SQL Server." ActiveX Data Objects ( ADO )

10384-495: The removal of the Start menu . On September 30, 2014, Microsoft announced Windows 10 as the successor to Windows 8.1. It was released on July 29, 2015, and addresses shortcomings in the user interface first introduced with Windows 8. Changes on PC include the return of the Start Menu, a virtual desktop system, and the ability to run Windows Store apps within windows on the desktop rather than in full-screen mode. Windows 10

10502-502: The router. The Super Socket Net-Lib also handles data encryption via the use of the Windows SSL API. The Shared Memory Net-Lib, on the other hand, manages connections between multiple instances of SQL Server that exist on one computer. It uses a shared memory area to communicate between the processes. This is inherently secure; there is no need for data encryption between instances of SQL Server that exist on one computer as

10620-754: The said Control Panel). Third-party IMEs may also be installed if a user feels that the provided one is insufficient for their needs. Since Windows 2000, English editions of Windows NT have East Asian IMEs (such as Microsoft Pinyin IME and Microsoft Japanese IME) bundled, but files for East Asian languages may be manually installed on Control Panel. Interface languages for the operating system are free for download, but some languages are limited to certain editions of Windows. Language Interface Packs (LIPs) are redistributable and may be downloaded from Microsoft's Download Center and installed for any edition of Windows (XP or later) – they translate most, but not all, of

10738-408: The same machine (of other IPC methods, only Internet domain sockets—not Unix domain sockets—can use a computer network ), and care must be taken to avoid issues if processes sharing memory are running on separate CPUs and the underlying architecture is not cache coherent . IPC by shared memory is used for example to transfer images between the application and the X server on Unix systems, or inside

10856-420: The same time, through cooperative multitasking . Windows implemented an elaborate, segment-based, software virtual memory scheme, which allows it to run applications larger than available memory: code segments and resources are swapped in and thrown away when memory became scarce; data segments moved in memory when a given application had relinquished processor control. Windows 3.0 , released in 1990, improved

10974-517: The secondary Net-Libs – though the TCP/IP secondary Net-Lib is an exception in that it calls on the Windows Sockets 2 API directly. The Banyan VINES , AppleTalk , ServerNet , IPX/SPX , Giganet , and RPC Net-Libs were dropped from MDAC 2.5 onwards. The Network Library router had the job of managing all these protocols, however now only the named pipes secondary Net-Lib is managed by

11092-439: The segmented memory provides a degree of protection. Windows 3.0 also featured improvements to the user interface. Microsoft rewrote critical operations from C into assembly . Windows 3.0 was the first version of Windows to achieve broad commercial success, selling 2 million copies in the first six months. Windows 3.1, made generally available on March 1, 1992, featured a facelift. In August 1993, Windows for Workgroups,

11210-658: The server for further processing. With the popular adoption of Transact-SQL , which extends SQL with such programming constructs as loops and conditional statements, this became less necessary and it was eventually deprecated in MDAC 2.7. Microsoft produced SOAP Toolkit 2.0, which allows clients to do this via an open XML -based standard. SQLXML was designed for SQL Server 2000, but was deprecated with MDAC 2.6. It allowed Microsoft's relational database to be viewed by XPath and allowed data to viewable as an XML file. It has not actually been deprecated but has been removed from later versions of MDAC, though Microsoft does provide it as

11328-539: The server run in an "unsafe" mode whereby the RDS could be exploited to gain unauthorized access to the system and a new restriction was imposed on the length of the Shape query string. There were also several ODBC Administrator changes. On May 23, 2005, Brad Rhodes (Lead Program Manager of Microsoft Data Access Technologies) announced that MDAC 2.8 SP1 was the last stand-alone redistributable of MDAC that Microsoft will ship. MDAC

11446-501: The use of COM objects – an OLE DB provider will map the data store technology's functionality to a particular COM interface. Microsoft calls the availability of an interface to be "provider-specific" as it may not be applicable depending on the database technology involved. Additionally, however, providers may also augment the capabilities of a data store; these capabilities are known as services in Microsoft parlance. The Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server (SQLOLEDB)

11564-465: The worst operating systems Microsoft had ever released, and the fourth worst tech product of all time. In November 1988, a new development team within Microsoft (which included former Digital Equipment Corporation developers Dave Cutler and Mark Lucovsky ) began work on a revamped version of IBM and Microsoft's OS/2 operating system known as "NT OS/2". NT OS/2 was intended to be a secure, multi-user operating system with POSIX compatibility and

11682-653: Was an OLE DB provider for allowing ActiveX Data Objects access to databases via any ODBC driver. Microsoft supplied several OLE-DB providers (for the Indexing Service, Active Directory , Jet, SQL Server, Oracle ( MSDAORA ) and Internet Publishing), however unless otherwise directed, ADO defaulted to using MSDASQL as the default provider. After MDAC 2.5 both the Oracle ODBC driver and MSDASQL supported Oracle 7 and partially supported Oracle 8i. Features that were not supported were: Microsoft initially deprecated

11800-407: Was announced as the successor to Windows 10 during a livestream. The new operating system was designed to be more user-friendly and understandable. It was released on October 5, 2021. As of May 2022, Windows 11 is a free upgrade to Windows 10 users who meet the system requirements. In July 2021, Microsoft announced it will start selling subscriptions to virtualized Windows desktops as part of

11918-492: Was available in a number of different editions , and has been subject to some criticism , such as drop of performance, longer boot time, criticism of new UAC, and stricter license agreement. Vista's server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 was released in early 2008. On July 22, 2009, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 were released to manufacturing (RTM) and released to the public three months later on October 22, 2009. Unlike its predecessor, Windows Vista, which introduced

12036-517: Was designed as a modified microkernel , influenced by the Mach microkernel developed by Richard Rashid at Carnegie Mellon University, but without meeting all of the criteria of a pure microkernel. The first release of the resulting operating system, Windows NT 3.1 (named to associate it with Windows 3.1 ) was released in July 1993, with versions for desktop workstations and servers . Windows NT 3.5

12154-715: Was distributed through the web and with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 MDAC 2.6 RTM, SP1 (released June 20, 2001), and SP2 (released June 11, 2002) were distributed in parallel with the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 service packs, and could also be downloaded from the Microsoft website. Beginning with this version of MDAC, Microsoft Jet, Microsoft Jet OLE DB Provider, and the ODBC Desktop Database Drivers were not included. Instead, these could be installed manually. Microsoft also released an alert warning that MDAC 2.6 should not be installed on an SQL Server 7.0 Cluster, because "if you install MDAC 2.6 or later on any node in

12272-487: Was distributed with the Data Access 2.0 SDK and included the contents of MDAC 1.5, the ODBC 3.5 SDK and the OLE DB 1.5 SDK, and the OLE DB for OLAP Specification. It also had included many updates to the core product, including a security feature added to the RDS which prevented it from being used maliciously an IIS server. This version came included in Windows NT 4.0 SP4, and also with Visual Studio 6.0, which came with

12390-476: Was divided among 65 different repositories with a kind of virtualization layer to produce unified view of all of the code. Shared memory (interprocess communication) In computer science , shared memory is memory that may be simultaneously accessed by multiple programs with an intent to provide communication among them or avoid redundant copies. Shared memory is an efficient means of passing data between programs. Depending on context, programs may run on

12508-560: Was found some time later and it affected MDAC 2.1, 2.5 and 2.6 and was addressed in a later patch MDAC 2.5 was released on February 17, 2000, and distributed with Windows 2000 , and the MDAC service packs were released in parallel with the Windows 2000 service packs. They were also distributed through Microsoft's website. Three service packs were released. The components included with 2.5 were: Several issues were found in this version of MDAC. When using OLE DB Session Pooling, Microsoft COM+ would try to continuously load and unload OLE DB, and

12626-462: Was marketed in two main editions : the "Home" edition was targeted towards consumers, while the "Professional" edition was targeted towards business environments and power users , and included additional security and networking features. Home and Professional were later accompanied by the "Media Center" edition (designed for home theater PCs , with an emphasis on support for DVD playback, TV tuner cards , DVR functionality, and remote controls), and

12744-698: Was not released until November 1985. Windows 1.0 was to compete with Apple 's operating system, but achieved little popularity. Windows 1.0 is not a complete operating system; rather, it extends MS-DOS . The shell of Windows 1.0 is a program known as the MS-DOS Executive . Components included Calculator , Calendar, Cardfile , Clipboard Viewer , Clock, Control Panel , Notepad , Paint , Reversi , Terminal and Write . Windows 1.0 does not allow overlapping windows. Instead, all windows are tiled . Only modal dialog boxes may appear over other windows. Microsoft sold as included Windows Development libraries with

12862-410: Was released in April 2003. It was followed in December 2005, by Windows Server 2003 R2. After a lengthy development process , Windows Vista was released on November 30, 2006, for volume licensing and January 30, 2007, for consumers. It contained a number of new features , from a redesigned shell and user interface to significant technical changes , with a particular focus on security features . It

12980-569: Was released in September 1994, focusing on performance improvements and support for Novell 's NetWare , and was followed up by Windows NT 3.51 in May 1995, which included additional improvements and support for the PowerPC architecture. Windows NT 4.0 was released in June 1996, introducing the redesigned interface of Windows 95 to the NT series. On February 17, 2000, Microsoft released Windows 2000 ,

13098-675: Was released in two different versions: Windows/286 and Windows/386 . Windows/386 uses the virtual 8086 mode of the Intel 80386 to multitask several DOS programs and the paged memory model to emulate expanded memory using available extended memory . Windows/286, in spite of its name, runs on both Intel 8086 and Intel 80286 processors. It runs in real mode but can make use of the high memory area . In addition to full Windows packages, there were runtime-only versions that shipped with early Windows software from third parties and made it possible to run their Windows software on MS-DOS and without

13216-509: Was released on November 20, 1985, as a graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The name "Windows" is a reference to the windowing system in GUIs. The 1990 release of Windows 3.0 catapulted its market success and led to various other product families, including the now-defunct Windows 9x , Windows Mobile , Windows Phone , and Windows CE/Embedded Compact . Windows

13334-401: Was roughly equivalent to a service pack . The first OSR of Windows 95 was also the first version of Windows to be bundled with Microsoft's web browser , Internet Explorer . Mainstream support for Windows 95 ended on December 31, 2000, and extended support for Windows 95 ended on December 31, 2001. Windows 95 was followed up with the release of Windows 98 on June 25, 1998, which introduced

13452-513: Was support for Microsoft's 64-bit operating system, however support for Banyan VINES was also dropped from this version of MDAC. There were several known issues: MDAC 2.7 continued causing connectivity problems on clustered servers running Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 or SQL Server 7.0, with no workaround provided by Microsoft. When creating or configuring ODBC data source names (DSNs) using the Microsoft SQL Server ODBC driver

13570-638: Was the Data Access Objects (DAO) DLL , DAO allowed programmers access to the Jet engine. It was basically an object-oriented data language used by Access Basic and Visual Basic application developers to access Jet. Similarly, the Microsoft Jet OLE DB Provider and Replication Objects (JRO) which allowed replication between Jet data sources was removed from MDAC 2.6 The Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC, or MSDASQL ,

13688-586: Was the first client version of Windows NT to be released simultaneously in IA-32 and x64 editions. As of 2024, x64 is still supported. An edition of Windows 8 known as Windows RT was specifically created for computers with ARM architecture , and while ARM is still used for Windows smartphones with Windows 10, tablets with Windows RT will not be updated. Starting from Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (version 1709) and later includes support for ARM-based PCs. Windows CE (officially known as Windows Embedded Compact ),

13806-556: Was used in the Dreamcast along with Sega's own proprietary OS for the console. Windows CE was the core from which Windows Mobile was derived. Its successor, Windows Phone 7 , was based on components from both Windows CE 6.0 R3 and Windows CE 7.0 . Windows Phone 8 however, is based on the same NT-kernel as Windows 8. Windows Embedded Compact is not to be confused with Windows XP Embedded or Windows NT 4.0 Embedded , modular editions of Windows based on Windows NT kernel. Xbox OS

13924-420: Was using Git, in about 8500 commits and 1760 Windows builds per day. In June 2021, shortly before Microsoft's announcement of Windows 11, Microsoft updated their lifecycle policy pages for Windows 10, revealing that support for their last release of Windows 10 will end on October 14, 2025. On April 27, 2023, Microsoft announced that version 22H2 would be the last of Windows 10. On June 24, 2021, Windows 11

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