I do wonder if you could just host use .NET core on 2003 server. While officially Win7+, Linux and OS X are the only supported platforms, I’m fairly certain it’s just a collection of dlls (you can do xcopy deployments of .NET core apps).
Otherwise if you’re using SQL Server and have access to SSIS you can always consume JSON.net in a script component, or if you’re feeling advertureious – write your own DTS components to interface to your web-services.

My exciting deploy target is a Windows 2003 x64 system, with an existing .net 2.0 framework & MSDE 2000. Im in the exciting position of having my hands tied behind my back, as Im not allowed to install any system software, or update anything. So yeah, I have to interface all these new fangled JSON based web apps that reside on various network devices, mine the data and since I’m an old bastard I’m using SQL to generate the data in ways I want it. I wonder if I can drop the linq stuff into my working directory I’d suspect that may work, which would at least buy me some of the new age inline ‘using’ stuff.

As for using .net vs Java aka Microsoft vs Oracle, well I’ve been through the Oracle rodeo one too many times, and I’ll never go there ever again if I can make that choice. But at the same time going back to my insane demands, I can’t install Java on this machine, so it’s moot.

two fun facts: C# is really a front to convert Java programmers into ML ones. You can use Linq and other .NET 3.x stuff (probs not WPF tho) on 98/NT4/2K by moving around System.Core from 3.5.

cool! I’ve been using demo versions of hip trendy products…

Really handy… but you’ll find that empty objects get translated to ‘object’ which doesn’t always help.