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How do I check my connection to my mrInterview SQL database

Friday, November 14th, 2008 | Connecting, Data Management

You have your mrInterview system setup, but you are unsure if the SQL database is accessible to you. The first thing to do would be to talk to your IT guys and see what they have to say, if they say you should be able to connect then the quickest way for you to double check is to try and make the SQL connection. Ask them to provide you with the SQL login details ( name of server, user login and password ) and once you have this, you are ready to go.

In this article we are going to assume that our login ID is “DataBaseUser” and the password is “DataBasePassword”. We are using Windows XP and will be looking for the “Database sources ( ODBC )” icon so if you are using a different windows operating system then the location of this icon may be in a slightly different place. So on XP, where is it, well if you click on your “start” button, then “all programs”, “administrative tools”, “Data Sources (ODBC)” it will appear. You may find that you don’t have access to administrative tools, if this is the case speak to your IT staff and see if you can get access to just the Data Sources bit, it is possible, you will just have to find out if your security policies allow it.

Once you have found “Data Sources (ODBC)” click on the icon and you should see the following screen, 

Create New Connection

click add and scroll down to SQL Server , then click finished.

Add SQL Connection

Next you should see the following screen.

Enter machine name

We need to enter a “name” and a “description” in the boxes provided and then we can do two things, the first is to just type the name of the server in the box then click next or you can click the dropdown, by clicking the dropdown the ODBC dialog box control will scan your available networks for all database’s it can find, for speed ,I always type in the name of the server and click next, if I get it right and I am allowed to get to the next screen, this gives me a sign as to wether I can connect to the server or not.

Depending on the type of access you have been given to the database will depend on what you can do next. If you just click next and you get to the next screen then you have been given windows authentication permissions, what this means is that you should be able to access the SQL server with using the user information that you entered when logging into the computer. If you get an error when you click next , it means that you don’t have this type of access and will need to try the SQL login information your IT contacts have given you. To enter the information click the “SQL Server authentication” radio button and enter the password and login information , this is what the screen should look like.

Enter Login Information

click next and , if everything is ok , you will see the following screen,

Specify Database

place a tick in the box that says “Change the default database to” and hit the dropdown, you should see that you get a list of database’s, select the “mrInterviewData”. Now to be honest at this stage we know we have access to the database so we could just cancel everything , however we will just make sure and complete the rest of the steps. Once you have selected the database click next and you will see the next screen. 

Default settings

For our test’s there should be no need to change anything on this screen so go ahead and click finish. What we see next is a screen that will allow us to test our connection

Test

Click Test Data Source and if all is correct you should see the following screen.

Test OK

Click ok and then ok again and you will see that you now have a new ODB connection in the list. 

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