How to create ADO connection string quickly.

Applies To
OS:
VB:		 NT, 9x, 2000
5, 6

Initially, when ADO first came out there was a lot of confusion as to how create the Connection string needed for an ADO Connection object.  There is still quite a bit of confusion even though a simple method exists to create this connnection string.  Follow the steps below and you'll never have problems generating connection strings again.

  1. On the desktop, create a file called x.udl.  You can do this by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting New/Text Document, then renaming the resulting file to x.udl.
  2. Double click on the file, click on the Provider tab and you'll see the screen below.  If you don't see this screen, the check out troubleshooting tips below.
    If you are connecting an Access 2000 database, select OLE DB Provider for Jet 4.0.  If you are connecting to Access 97 or earlier database, select OLE DB Provider for Jet 3.51.  If you are connecting to a data source that has no native OLEDB provider (like Paradox, or some versions of Sybase, Informix, etc...), select the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC drivers.  If you are connecting to Microsoft SQL Server, use the native OLE DB Provider for SQL Server.
    Provider tab
  3. Click on the Connection tab.  Depending on what provider you've selected, you'll see different things here.  In general, you'll be asked to enter UserID, Password, ODBC connection (if you've selected Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC drivers) and maybe the initial catalog to use (in other words, if you have several databases on a server, which one do you want to use by default).

  4. Click Test Connection button.  If the connection succeeds, you are done.  Click OK.  Then open x.udl in a text editor like notepad.  You will see the connection string that you need.  Copy it out of the file and set it to the ConnectionString property of the Connection object.

If the connection fails, you can try several things.

 

Troubleshooting Microsoft Data Link
So you created x.udl, but double-clicking on it doesn't bring up Microsoft Data Link applet. It brings up Notepad or something like that. Try the following troubleshooting tips.