The instructions should work for many versions SQL Server, Python and Anaconda, including Anaconda Enterprise, our commercially oriented version of Anaconda that adds in strong collaboration, security, and server deployment capabilities. This blog post demonstrates how Anaconda and Anaconda Enterprise can be used on the client-side to connect Python running on Windows, Mac, or Linux to a SQL Server instance.
With the news that Microsoft SQL Server 2017 has increased support for Python, by including a subset of Anaconda packages on the server-side, I thought it would be useful to demonstrate how Anaconda delivers the easy button to get Python on the client side connected to Microsoft SQL Server. Previously there were many twisty roads that you may have followed if you wanted to use Python on a client system to connect to a Microsoft SQL Server database, and not all of those roads would even get you to your destination.