Testing connectivity to a SQL server

While configuring ALM, if there are issues connecting to SQL server and if there is no permission to connect to DB server and check connectivity, the below simple steps can be used to check connectivity between ALM server and SQL DB server.
 
Create the data link (UDL) file
 
1.Right-click the Windows desktop, point to New, and then click Text Document. A new file is created by default (New Text Document.txt).
2.Right-click the Text Document created in step 1, choose Rename, and then change the name and extension of the file to: abc.udl
3.A warning might appear, explaining that changing file extensions could cause files to become unusable. Disregard this warning.
4.This (abc.udl) file can be stored anywhere on the system or network.
5.Double-click the (abc.udl) file or right-click it, and then click Properties. This opens the Data Link Properties dialog box. It’s ready to connect to the data source.
 
Testing connectivity to a SQL server
 
1.Select the Provider tab in file properties window.
2.From the list of OLE DB Provider(s) select ‘Microsoft OLE DB for SQL Server’.
3.Click “Apply” and move to the Connection tab.
4.Enter the SQL server’s hostname followed by a backslash (\) in the first box. E.g. windows2003server\sophos
5.Under ‘Enter information to log on to the server’ select one of the radio buttons...
 i. Use Windows NT Integrated security’ if the SQL server uses Windows authentication
 ii. User a specific user name and password’ if the SQL server uses SQL authentication.
6.Under ‘Select the database on the server’ click on the drop down list to view the databases that are available.
7.Select the require database and click the ‘Test Connection’ button.
8.If necessary record any error seen and forward to technical support. Otherwise click OK to close the properties window and save the connection settings.

Note - Please refer KM194278 for connectivity using jdbc drivers