Question

When I right click on Server Name within “Object Explorer” and choose “Properties->Connections” I can see that nothing has been ticked in “Default Connection Options”. Also I can see when I ran sp_configure 'user options' (advanced options on) that config_value is 0. At the same time when I do “SELECT @@OPTIONS” I can see that value is 5496. It turns out to be true as enabled options are actually working.

The question is: why do I have misleading info in SMSS and sp_configure and why is it different from @@OPTIONS value despite BOL saying

The bit positions in user options are identical to those in @@OPTIONS. Each connection has its own @@OPTIONS function, which represents the configuration environment. When logging in to Microsoft SQL Server, a user receives a default environment that assigns the current user options value to @@OPTIONS.

Answer 1

“user options” as a server level setting says (my bold)

The user options option allows you to change the default values of the SET options (if the server’s default settings are not appropriate). A user can override these defaults by using the SET statement.

Now, check the connection options in SSMS and then run SQL profiler. You’ll note that SSMS (and other clients) issue a lot of SET commands that sets @@OPTIONS.

So no options are set at the server level (the zero you see). SSMS will set them for you, same as the SQLOLEDB, SQLNCLI, ODBC, DB-Lib etc drivers.

Example for SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER:

The SQL Server Native Client ODBC driver and SQL Server Native Client OLE DB Provider for SQL Server automatically set QUOTED_IDENTIFIER to ON when connecting. This can be configured in ODBC data sources, in ODBC connection attributes, or OLE DB connection properties. The default for SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER is OFF for connections from DB-Library applications.