Hi,
When I create a linked server using Enterprise Manager, I can choose to say it's an SQL Server, and just put the server name in. Otherwise, I can explicitly say to use the "Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server", and give the linked server a nice alias.
I am recommending that my company change from using the "SQL Server" option to using the full provider so that we can have the same alias across dev, uat and prod environments.
Question is, is there any performance benefit over just choosing "SQL Server", or does it just use the same OLE DB provider anyway?
Thanks,
Steve