FreeTDS Development Group

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden AT freetds.org>]

Patrick Corbett wrote:
> I have a setup of SQL Server 2000 on IIS/2003 Server. I'd like to
> connect to the database using the FreeTDS driver, but I am having
> trouble connecting to my database using a named instance. Is it possible
> to connect via a named instance? 
...
> My current freetds.conf file looks like:
> 
> ------
> [abc\def]
> host = 204.228.89.23:1433
> instance = abc\def
> port = 1433

You want somthing more like this:

[def]
host = abc
instance = def
port = 1433
client charset = UTF-8
tds version = 8.0

The freetds.conf lines are just name-value pairs.  They're not parsed. 
When you say your host is "204.228.89.23:1433", the library calls
config.c::tds_lookup_host().  That first tries to convert it to an IP
address, and fails (because :1433 isn't part of the address) and then
hands it verbatim to gethostbyname(3).  It responds with HOST_NOT_FOUND
because there's no machine with that *name*....

The backslash and :port syntaxes are for command lines and parseable
strings such as ODBC uses.  

HTH.

--jkl