The Tempermental ODBC Connection

  • Hi All

    We have a 2000 Enterprise SP4 server running one of our main business critical databases.

    We have a multiple web front end servers connecting in to the database to access information and we thought that 100% of the time the connections open and close fine otherwise we would have had directors coming down on us like a ton of bricks saying why is it not working.

    One of our developers came to me the other day and said they where having a temperamental connection issue. This is happening about 3 - 5 times a day but the server is accessed 24/7 and no one but this developer had raised an issue.

    We are getting the following message

    [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][TCP/IP Sockets]General network error. Check your network documentation.

    [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][TCP/IP Sockets]SQL Server does not exist or access denied.

    Unable to connect to server :

    Server: Msg 17, Level 16, State 1

    [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][TCP/IP Sockets]SQL Server does not exist or access denied.

    [TCP/IP Sockets]SQL Server does not exist or access denied.

    [TCP/IP Sockets]ConnectionOpen (Connect()).

    We all have ODBC DSN's on out local machines and they all connected fine, we cannot replicate the issue. (The issue is only from the Web Server)

    I have looked at the following KB's and they are not applicable for the environment that we operate in.

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/884012

    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/328306

    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/888228

    Does anyone have any ideas?

    Thanks

  • It looks like a network error on the web server rather than a problem in SQLServer itself.

    It could be useful to sniff the network packets between the web server and the database server with a tool like wireshark. I see you're using TCP/IP connectivity, so maybe it's a random problem related to the UDP packets sent out by the SQLBrowser service, that may be dropped in case of heavy network load.

    Hope this helps

    Gianluca

    -- Gianluca Sartori

  • You could also try to set the IP address and the port on which SQLServer listens manually, so that SQLBrowser is not involded. This worked for me in some cases.

    Regards

    Gianluca

    -- Gianluca Sartori

  • The server has a static IP and port specific for its own SQL Server. We have a number of web boxes and other servers which hook into the databases.

    It would be a time consuming task to configure SQL to listen to the 100+ servers which access the databases at some point in the day.

    My thoughts exactly where to use Wireshark and see what was happening as it was my belife also that it was not a SQL Server problem and did not lye in my remit.

    Thanks

    Ant

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