Abbreviated as TDS,
Tabular Data Stream is an
application level
protocol that describes the transmission of data between two computers. TDS defines the types of messages that can be sent as well as the order in which the messages can be sent in. TDS relies on a
connection-oriented transport service. Session, presentation and application service elements are provided by TDS. The TDS protocol was designed and developed by Sybase Inc. for their Sybase
SQL Server relational database engine in 1984.