sql server connect: I work for DataDirect-Technologies. A customer of ours uses our ODBC driver
on UNIX to connect to a SQL Server 2000 Named Instance. We have noticed that
in the Enterprise Manager if you right-click on the Named instance and open
the Properties menu and then open Network Configuration, TCP/IP and Named
Pipes are listed by default under the Enabled Protocols. Our customer is
unable to connect to a Named Instance unless he disables Named Pipes. If he
uses the Microsoft ODBC driver on Windows, Named Pipes does not affect his
abilty to connect to the Named Instance. He is able to connect to the Named
Instance from UNIX with Named Pipes enabled if he specifies HostName,Port
instead of HostName\InstanceName. I read through this Microsoft Article which
sounds similar to our situation except that the customer's SQL Server is
running on Win 2000 and not Win XP sp2:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;839269. Can anyone
tell me what Named Pipes does and why it affects the ability to connect to a

Named Pipes is a legacy IPC to communicate over the network. Named Pipe
connections use SMB protocol and connect over port 139 and 445.

In a WAN environment or with Web Applications, most customers find that
TCP/IP performs better.

By default SQL will Listen on TCP/IP and Named Pipes.
For Unix clients the only option is to use TCP/IP as the IPC.

The client can specify that they want to use a particular IPC eg. TCP in
the connection string or by creating an alias or
by specify tcp:Servername.

The network libraries have no effect on Named Instances. We enumerate the
Named Instances protocol info using a query
to UDP port 1434.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Kevin McDonnell
Microsoft Corporation

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