Connecting to SQL Server from java with TCP disabled

Question

I\'m trying to connect to a local database (SQL Server 2008) from Java. I have disabled the tcp connections per customer requirements and I can\'t connect. I have to disable

Answer 1

I assume you are using the SQL Server Express version came with Visual Studio 2010. For other version there should be similar solutions but I have not tested. Here is the solution:

1. Enable TCP/IP protocol. Find "SQL Server Configuration Manager" from start menu, expand "SQL Server Network Configuration" and click on "Protocols for SQLEXPRESS", double click "TCP/IP" and change the "Enabled" property to "Yes". Check the "IP Addresses" tab and enable the IP addresses you wan to use (typically "127.0.0.1").

2. Enable user sa in SQL Server. Press Win+R, type in "sqlcmd -S .\SQLEXPRESS" and run the following commands:

   ALTER LOGIN sa ENABLE;
   GO
   ALTER LOGIN sa WITH PASSWORD='StrongPassword1!'
   GO
   

3. Change the login mode to enable explicit login. Press Win+R again and type in "regedit", find the following key

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.SQLEXPRESS\MSSQLServer
   

   and then change the value "LoginMode" to 2.

4. Test the configuration. Create a test connection in Visual Studio 2010, uses user name "sa" and password "StrongPassword1!". if you can connect you should be able to connect through JDBC as well.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, Microsoft's JDBC driver does not support named pipes connections to SQLServer. You can try finding and alternative JDBC driver to use.

Take a look at jTDS. It's free, open source, and it connects to SQLServer using named pipes.

Answer 3

I know this is an old question. However, I was searching how to configure Shared Memory access to SQL Server using the Microsoft JDBC driver and came across it. The definite answer is: The Microsoft JDBC driver only supports TCP connections, not shared memory nor named pipes. Now that the driver is open source, you can check that yourself in the source code on GitHub: The relevant code is the local class TDSChannel in toplevel class IOBuffer (currently found here). Method open in this class only accesses tcp sockets (and SSL sockets), but not any shared memory or named pipes.

This means that using other drivers than the MS JDBC driver is the only possibility when you cannot or do not want to use TCP/IP connections.