The database driver doesn't support modern datatime types.

[tbenny]

When we use Freetds and unixodbc with pyodbc-azure package in our Django application , we are getting the error while connecting to MSSql Server 2016
django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: The database driver doesn't support modern datatime types.

Our settings.py is as follows

DATABASES = {
'default': {
'ENGINE': 'sql_server.pyodbc',
'NAME': 'quickstartdb',
'USER': 'xx',
'PASSWORD': 'password',
'HOST': '192.xxx.xx.xx',
'PORT': '1433',
'OPTIONS': {
# 'AUTOCOMMIT': True,
'host_is_server': True,
'unicode_results': True,
'driver': 'FreeTDS',
},
},
}

Our ubuntu version is 18.10

[wil]

Could the issue be the TDS version used? According to this FreeTDS page you need to be using TDS version 7.3 and above in order to support DATETIME2, etc. I have not tested it, but it may be worth trying the following:

'OPTIONS': {
    'host_is_server': True,
    'unicode_results': True,
    'driver': 'FreeTDS',
    'extra_params': "TDS_VERSION=7.3",  # force the TDS version to 7.3 or 7.4 or 8.0
},

[nadyr-mg]

@wil I had the same problem, so I was searching for an answer for a whole day. You saved my life, thank you! ('extra_params' option solved the issue)

[wil]

I'm glad it helped @marshygeek.
@tbenny have you tried the extra_params option?