TNWiki Article Spotlight - How to Troubleshoot Connecting to the SQL Server Database Engine

  • Article

Good day and welcome to another edition of Tuesday - TNWiki Article Spotlight. Right after I take the opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas and happy new year (yes I know that there is still time but I don't want to miss it), we will dive into our Article Spotlight.

Article life expectancy

Figuring out how old your dog is relative to human age isn't as simple as people think. The simplest linear algorithm is that each year of a dog is like 7 years for human. I always use this analog in order to explain that each week of computer technologies evolution is like 70 years for human. If you wake up after one year of sleeping (not learning), then you will find your knowledge obsolete and irrelevant. Never stop learning! You must follow the technologies' progress and be updated on the latest changes! One way is to track new articles and blogs.

With that said some articles are still relevant 5 years later. Since it's just a few days before the New Year it seems a good time to recall articles written years ago which are still relevant and highly recommended today. In this post, I will focus on one of these articles.

Chosen Article

If you read the various SQL Server support forums you will notice there is one topic is clearly the most frequent: Issues regarding connecting to SQL Server.

Today's article is " How to Troubleshoot Connecting to the SQL Server Database Engine " by Rick Byham (Microsoft). The article was written in early 2011, and today 5 years later while we are using SQL Server 2016 it is still relevant. The article presents an exhaustive list of troubleshooting techniques to use when you cannot connect to the SQL Server Database Engine. These steps are ordered by the complexity from the most basic problems to more complex problems. The article focuses on remote connection, but it can help in local connection as well in basic cases.

I highly recommend reading the article, save the link to article, and next time that you see a question in the forum regarding a connection issue, you can post the link :-)

Have fun :-)
Ronen Ariely (aka PITUACH)

 

p.s.

Five years after article was written there is place for update, and you are most welcome to do your best. Editing articles and improving them is a big rule in the TechNet WIKI.