Hi, got a question from a client yesterday who wants (with FME2018.1) to connect to a SQL Server 2000 database (no the question is not from a museum: ).
FME returns a Fetching Feature Types Error, "... SQL Server Native Client 11.0 does not support connections to SQL Server 2000 or earlier versions".
Any ideas the minimum hazzle to get around here? Just to install the SQL Server native client 9.00 and problem solved? I do not have an environment for testing this myself 
cheers
Hi @palhermans,
It looks like we haven't supported connecting to a 2000 MSSQL database since about FME 2013 - around the same time Microsoft stopped supporting SQL Server 2000, as per: https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/lifecycle/search?alpha=sql%202000
Additionally, according to our Microsoft SQL Server documentation, the oldest version of SQL Server that is supported is 2005 with the 2008/2012 Native Client so I'm not sure if there is a way to connect without a previous version of FME (2013 or older).
The ancient jTDS JDBC driver apparently supports SQL Server 2000. Using that with the JDBC Reader/Writer ("generic", not the SQL Server one) in FME might work.
Thanks for commenting @chrisatsafe and @ravenkopelman, much appreciated 
In my searches for a solution JDBC was my first thought - but a parallel install of FME2013 is very/more tempting.
Hi but from my (teflon) memory I think the solution was a FME2013 install. But sorry for not posting the solution when I had it at that time. pH
So I wouldn’t call it a solution as yet
But in FME Desktop 2024.1 I managed to read from a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database with a JDBC connection string, specifying the string like this
jdbc:jTDS:sqlserver://<server>t:<port>][/<database>]
&
installing the jTDS driver
BUT
i had to temporarily remove the mssql-jdbc jar file to get it to work
Edit: once i set the Java Driver Class it worked :-)
On Flow the java driver class didn’t need to be set, just the jTDS file added to the relevant folder