I learned about something very useful today and thought I’d share.
Have you ever been troubleshooting a problem with remote SQL Iproxy MP, remote DB, etc) and wanted to test to see if the local system account (or any account for that matter) could make a remote connection to SQL but you didn’t want to install the SQL tools just to make that test? Seems there is a file type – UDL file – that you can simply create that will bring up a window to allow testing of remote connections to SQL.
Just go anywhere on your system and create an empty text file named anything but instead of txt make sure the extension is UDL. Then, double-click on the file and up pops a SQL connectivity window to allow testing of remote SQL connections.
Very easy to use to test connectivity with a known user account or as local system (using PSExec).
And also, after you make test, you can open the file with notepad again and you will see the connection string to that SQL you were testing at
Wow! Nice one! I will cross post it! Thanks for sharing!
Very handy tip. Thanks for this!
Great tip indeed! I cross posted it too
microsoftplatform.blogspot.com
I love this. Thanks for sharing Steve
Great tip…could have used this a few weeks ago!
Super astuce !!!
Simple, but very useful, I think this is easiest way to do this, good tip, thank you for share.
Much needed one! Thanks.
Awesome! So easy! Great tip! Thanks!
Super awesome tip, saved me a lot of time:)
Neat one – also if you need rdp where this is disbaled on certain computers , create a text file and save it with an rdp extension (say myrdp.rdp) – double click on that.
For some reason, I am getting the error:
filename.UDL: File cannot be opened. Ensure it is a valid Data Link file.
Just a note: I am not a SQL person so may be I am doing something incorrect here. I am mainly trying to test if the username password for sql server I have, it works when I am testing from sql client. I am in sql 2008 environment.
File is ok. I had entered a # and a comment, thinking in windows I will not be able to save blank file which I know is possible in unix/linux by touch command.
thank you for very informative post for a non SQL person.
Thanks. That saved a day 🙂
Came in very handy.
Bookmarked this page as well 😀
how do you specify the IP of the server????
WOW!!! It's Really Really Good….THX
Great indeed, very thanks, it helped checking the connectivity in my lan…
Great article, thank for sharing
Brilliant… thanks heaps! saved me a lot of time!
How about multiple SQL servers?
Awesome tip. Thank you!!!
Thanks for this tip . I had problem testing a remote connection , this helped me a lot
Thanks for sharing this, wonderful tip.. 🙂