Create the data link (UDL) file:
1. Right-click the Windows desktop, point to New, and then click Text Document. A new file is created by default (New Text Document.txt).
2. Open Windows Explorer, and on the Tools menu, click Folder Options. On the View tab, clear the Hide file extensions for known file type’s check box and then click OK.
3. Right-click the Text Document you created in step 1, choose Rename, and then change the name and extension of the file to: test.udl
4. A warning might appear, explaining that changing file extensions could cause files to become unusable. Disregard this warning.
5. You can store the (test.udl) file anywhere on your system or network.
6. Double-click the (testudl) file or you can optionally right-click it, and then click Properties. This opens the Data Link Properties dialog box. You are now ready to connect to your data source.
Testing connectivity to a SQL server:
1. When you have opened the data link properties select the Provider tab.
2. From the list of OLE DB Provider(s) select ‘Microsoft OLE DB for SQL Server’.
3. Click the next button to move to the Connection tab.
4. Enter Servername\InstanceName or try it without the instance. To find the instance name open services on the SQL server and find the SQL Server service. The instance name will be in brackets next to the service. If there is nothing in brackets then a named instance is not being used.
5. Under ‘Enter information to log on to the server’ select one of the radio buttons...
- ‘Use Windows NT Integrated security’ if the SQL server uses Windows authentication or if you are using a SQL Account select "Use a specific Username and Password and enter the username and password
- ‘User a specific user name and password’ if the SQL server uses SQL authentication.
6. Under ‘Select the database on the server’ click on the drop down list to view the databases that are available.
7. Select the require database and click the ‘Test Connection’ button and if it succeeds you should be fine. If it fails then the connection is being blocked and this needs to be troubleshooted outside of Messagestats.
