Ben Forta's ColdFusion Blog: ColdFusion And SQL Server 2005

I am using ColdFusion MX 7.01 with the default SQL Server driver, and am connected to SQL Server 2005

Jan. 10, 2006 07:45 PM

ColdFusion And SQL Server 2005

Several users have wanted to know if ColdFusion supports SQL Server 2005. And the answer appears to be yes. I am using ColdFusion MX 7.01 with the default SQL Server driver, and am connected to SQL Server 2005, and so far so good. Microsoft does have a new SQL Server 2005 JDBC driver in beta, but thus far I have not installed it, and not needed to. All testing thus far has worked flawlessly, using basic statements as well as browsing tables and schemas via RDS.

The only two issues I ran into were minor configuration and security setting defaults that needed to be tweaked.

First of all, by default SQL Server 2005 has TCP/IP connections disabled. To enable TCP/IP support, use the SQL Server Configuration Manager tool, select SQL Server 2005 Network Configuration, select Protocols, double-click on TCP/IP, and turn on Enabled.

The next gotcha was the user account. I created a SQL Server user account for ColdFusion, but by default SQL Server 2005 only uses Windows Authentication (which is generally not how ColdFusion would authenticate). To enable support for SQL Server Authentication, right-click on the server in Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio, select Properties, Security, and set Server Authentication to SQL Server and Windows Authentication.

And that seems to do the trick.

About Ben Forta
Ben Forta is Adobe's Senior Technical Evangelist. In that capacity he spends a considerable amount of time talking and writing about Adobe products (with an emphasis on ColdFusion and Flex), and providing feedback to help shape the future direction of the products. By the way, if you are not yet a ColdFusion user, you should be. It is an incredible product, and is truly deserving of all the praise it has been receiving. In a prior life he was a ColdFusion customer (he wrote one of the first large high visibility web sites using the product) and was so impressed he ended up working for the company that created it (Allaire). Ben is also the author of books on ColdFusion, SQL, Windows 2000, JSP, WAP, Regular Expressions, and more. Before joining Adobe (well, Allaire actually, and then Macromedia and Allaire merged, and then Adobe bought Macromedia) he helped found a company called Car.com which provides automotive services (buy a car, sell a car, etc) over the Web. Car.com (including Stoneage) is one of the largest automotive web sites out there, was written entirely in ColdFusion, and is now owned by Auto-By-Tel.

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Ben Forta's ColdFusion Blog: ColdFusion And SQL Server 2005

Augustine wrote: Thanks for the info. I spent an hour trying to find it. And your solution worked instantly. AJT