We have extended our SQL Connectivity Customer Survey until November 2, 2010 5:00PM PST.  If you have not done so please take a moment to fill our our easy 10 question survey listed below at the link to help shape the future of SQL Server.

Thanks, SQL Connectivity Team

Greetings to the SQL Server community :

Last year in October 2009, we introduced  the process of interacting on a regular basis with the developers and users in the form of surveys.  During the last 12 months, we completed surveys that focused on the broad SQL Connectivity components, including ODBC, ADO.NET, JDBC and PHP.  These surveys provide us with an ability to validate some of the requests we have got from developers, users and partners such as you as well as ideas that we have gathered internally as a part of our development process.    You have seen our roadmap for SQL Server evolve based on the feedback that we have received.

We view your organization as a key stakeholder in the process that we have to identify areas for future investments.  The feedback you provide is valuable and each response will be read and will be treated with utmost confidence. 

The survey can be found in the link below and will be available until November 2, 2010 5:00 PM PST.

 http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22BAW29Z8P2

Thank you,

Raghu Ram

Principal Group Program Manager

SQL Connectivity

SQL Server RDBMS Group

Microsoft Corporation

Last year in October 2009, we introduced  the process of interacting on a regular basis with the developers and users in the form of surveys.  During the last 12 months, we completed surveys that focused on the broad SQL Connectivity components, including ODBC, ADO.NET, JDBC and PHP.  These surveys provide us with an ability to validate some of the requests we have got from developers, users and partners such as you as well as ideas that we have gathered internally as a part of our development process.    You have seen our roadmap for SQL Server evolve based on the feedback that we have received.

We view your organization as a key stakeholder in the process that we have to identify areas for future investments.  The feedback you provide is valuable and each response will be read and will be treated with utmost confidence. 

The survey can be found in the link below and will be available until 25th October, 2010 5:00 PM PST.

 http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22BAW29Z8P2

Thank you,

Raghu Ram

Principal Group Program Manager

SQL Connectivity

SQL Server RDBMS Group

Microsoft Corporation

The changes to behavior of the GetOverlappedResult API, which SQL Server client drivers use for performing network reads and writes, is described here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd371711(VS.85).aspx. When SQL Server client drivers get the new Windows behavior of GetOverlappedResult, they will reliably hang as soon as the network connection is opened. So, when using ADO.Net, you would notice that the thread hangs as soon as your application calls SQLConnection.Open(). This also applies to other client drivers, like the SQL Server Native Client 10.0. Since SQL Server’s setup includes making connections to the database instance to perform various T-SQL queries, this may also cause a hang during SQL Server setup. It sounds like a serious problem!

Fortunately, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 also built in the “Switchback” feature to keep existing applications working. Switchback examines some properties of the process and DLLs and determines whether they should receive the new Windows 7 behavior or the pre-existing Windows behavior. For all existing SQL Server clients, SwitchBack should choose the original Windows behavior by default, so you should never see this hang.

However, Switchback can be manually overridden, causing the OS to always give all applications the new Windows behavior. If that override is set, SQL Server clients will reliably show the hang described above. To check if this is the source of your SQL Server connection’s hang, check this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindowsAppCompat

If this key exists, and it has the value SbEnable set to 0, the Switchback functionality is overridden. To allow SQL Server client drivers to connect, set the SbEnable value to 1 and restart the machine.

UPDATE: I wanted to add that this setting is usually configured through Group Policy for multiple machines, rather than individually through the registry as described above. The Group Policy setting is named "Turn off Switchback Compatibility Engine" and can be configured as described in this technet article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee126130(WS.10).aspx. As described above, the Switchback Compatibility Engine needs to be running (so this setting needs to be Disabled) for SQL Server's client drivers/providers to function correctly.

Dan Benediktson
SQL Server Protocols

Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

Dan Benediktson
SQL Server Protocols

Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

Our sister team, the SQL Server Native Client (SNAC), has a survey open to ask for your feedback as they take a step back to review the priorities and goals for the long term and identify areas that will benefit from investments.

As a whole, we view YOU and your organization as a key stakeholder in this process and would like to gather your inputs in this survey, which should take no more than 5 - 10 minutes. The feedback you provide is very valuable and be rest assured that each and every response will be read and will provide the background for some of the key decisions that we will make that will benefit our SQL Server database application developer community.

This survey will be open for your submissions until January 31, 2010 and can be found here.

SQL Server Protocols Team.

If you need to connect to SQL Server selectively here is how to achieve this:

You can take advantage of the two client settings, “Force Protocol Encryption” and “Trust Server Certificate” and two connection string parameters, “Encrypt” and “Trust Server Certificate”. The table below describes different combinations of these flags and the corresponding behavior.

It is this time of the year when we, in the SQL Connectivity product team, take a step back, review the priorities and goals for the long term and identify areas that will benefit from investments.

We view you and your organization as a key stakeholder in this process and would like to gather your inputs in this survey, which should take no more than 5-10 minutes and a few other surveys that we will conduct in the next few months. The feedback you provide is very valuable and be rest assured that each and every response will be read and will provide the background for some of the key decisions that we will make that will benefit our user community - developers, DBAs, and all those who use SQL Server or are looking for ways to expand the scope of the power of SQL Server within your organizations.

This survey will be open for your submissions until October 21, 2009 and can be found here. 

Thanks

Zlatko Michailov

Program Manager, SQL Server Protocols

Microsoft Corp.

Recently, I worked on a customer issue. The customer encountered an "error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified" error  although he has applied/verified every steps I posted in the blog:http://www.bing.com/search?q=error+26+blog+protocol&form=QBRE&qs=n

After some investigation, we found that: Windows Firewall is disabled on both server and client machine. Running Portqry from a command window also show that correct information was returned by SQL Browser and the UDP packet is received by the client machine. However, the application (specifically, SQL data access driver layer, e.g. SqlClient, SNAC)  still could not finish the SQL Server configuration discovery process. The strange part is that everything is fine if the app runs as a standalone app. If it runs as a service, we see the error 26. 

Netmon trace shows that no request UDP packet was sent out of the box. The packet must be lost somewhere. Meanwhile, we found Windows Firewall Service  (MpsSvc) is still running although we have disabled Firewall in "Windows Firewall with Advanced Security" configuration tool (run wf.msc  from command window). We tried to disable the Firewall service and the issue disappeared. So, obviously, the outgoing UDP packet is blocked by firewall. We engaged with Windows firewall team and found the root cause.

What happened is that since Windows Vista, Windows enhanced security practice for service, which is called Windows Service Hardening (WSH). A service developer can install WSH firewall rule for a specific service. WSH firewall rule has higher priority than regular firewall rules and it would take effect even if firewall has been disabled through wf.msc. In addition, you cannot turn on/off WSH firewall through wf.msc. You can only configure it through programming as of now (or manually edit some registry).

For the customer's case, he has a WSH firewall rule which block all outgoing UDP packets. So the solution is to put exception so that outgoing UDP packet targeting remote UDP port 1434 won't be dropped. Another thing worth mentioning is that WSH firewall will block packet even if the target is local machine. (Usually, Windows firewall never blocks local traffic.)

For further information about WSH, please read:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=network+restrictions+service+hardening&form=QBRE&qs=n

Also, please check the following link on about how to add a WSH firewall rule to allow outgoing connections (to SQL) for your services.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb736280(VS.85).aspx

Xinwei Hong, SQL Server Protocols
Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights