Have a look at the presentation I used at the User Group meeting in London a couple of years back.
This also covers the differences, pro and cons of the Live, Live with Cache and Linked tables.
You can find the presentation here: https://www.slideshare.net/peterhorsbollmoller/mapinfo-professional-120-and-sql-server-2008
Go to slide 48 where you can find a couple of slides covering the pros and cons.
Generally speaking there is a few considerations to make:
- Heavy querying in MapInfo Pro -> Linked
- Volatile data -> Live (With Cache)
- High Security -> Live (With Cache) – required log on to the database every time
- Static data -> Linked, if it only changes once a day, once a week, once a month, once a year
- Offline data access -> Linked