1) What is the difference between them?
2) Is one newer/superior to the other?
3) If yes for question two, then why and when would I use one over the other?
They are both OLE DB providers shipped by Microsoft. The SQL Server OLE DB driver has been deprecated for a while, in favor of the SQL Native Client, which contains both OLE DB and ODBC drivers in one. The OLE DB provider is really only available for backward compatibility.-Shannon