At the 2011 [[Professional Association for SQL Server]] (PASS) summit on October 11, Microsoft announced another major version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2012 (codenamed "Denali"). The final version was released to manufacturing on March 6, 2012.<ref name=2012-release>{{cite web|title=Microsoft Releases SQL Server 2012 to Help Customers Manage "Any Data, Any Size, Anywhere"|url=http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2012/mar12/03-06SQLServer12PR.mspx|work=Microsoft News Center|publisher=Microsoft|accessdate=March 7, 2012|date=March 6, 2012}}</ref> SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 1 was released to manufacturing on November 7, 2012, Service Pack 2 was released to manufacturing on June 10, 2014, Service Pack 3 was released to manufacturing on December 1, 2015, and Service Pack 4 was released to manufacturing on October 5, 2017.
It was announced to be the last version to natively support [[OLE DB]] and instead to prefer [[ODBC]] for native connectivity.<ref name="ODBC">{{cite web|title=Microsoft is Aligning with ODBC for Native Relational Data Access — FAQ|url=http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sqldataaccess/thread/e696d0ac-f8e2-4b19-8a08-7a357d3d780f|work=SQL Server Forums|publisher=Microsoft Corporation|accessdate=March 7, 2012|last=Lam|first=Rohan}}</ref>
