YAFD (Yet another fucking developer) that needs to use java to connect to YAFDB (Yet Another Fucking DataBase).

So start off and install Oracle java JRE 8 on your sql server.  Then go here and get the latest Microsoft JDBC Driver, 4.2 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11774

Go to your control Panel –> System and Security –> System. Click on the left side “Advanced system settings”.  Click Environmental Variables.  Click on NEW in the System variables and for the name use CLASSPATH.  And if you extracted the zip correctly you can use this for the value: C:\Program Files\Microsoft JDBC Driver 4.2 for SQL Server\sqljdbc_4.2\enu\sqljdbc42.jar

So now we need to build the connection string as outlined here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms378428%28v=sql.110%29.aspx