Database Support for Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) (830804)

SYMPTOMS

The Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) documentation and the RMS administrative interfaces make incorrect statements. These sources incorrectly state that you require a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database server or a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE) database server to use RMS.

Although RMS is designed for and tested with SQL Server 2000 database servers and MSDE database servers, RMS also supports other database servers that use the ADO.NET interfaces that are provided by the Microsoft .NET Framework. Therefore, other database vendors may have developed compatible database providers for RMS. You may use any database provider together with RMS on the condition that the corresponding database server complies with the criteria that are outlined in the "Resolution" section of this article.

RESOLUTION

To use other database providers together with RMS, the corresponding database server must comply with the following criteria:

The database server must be Transact-SQL compliant because RMS initialization scripts and RMS stored procedures use Transact-SQL.
The database server must support any Microsoft SQL Server-specific extensions.
The database provider must be able to:
- Respond to method calls of the System.Data.SqlClient namespace of the .NET Framework.
- Provide the corresponding functionality of the System.Data.SqlClient namespace.
- Use Windows Integrated Authentication instead of SQL authentication.

MORE INFORMATION

Microsoft does not support the usage of RMS together with a database provider other than either SQL Server 2000 or MSDE.

If you use RMS in any other configuration, contact the relevant database vendor or solution provider whose database provider you are using in your customized deployment.

Third-party providers may provide a SQL Server emulator or a shim. However, Microsoft has neither investigated nor tested this solution. Additionally, using a database migration tool that only converts RMS databases to another database provider will not be satisfactory to support RMS.