SAMPLE: How to Create a Data Link File with Windows 2000

Microsoft Data Link files provide an easy way to create or validate a Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) connection string that uses an ODBC Driver or an OLE DB Provider to connect to a given data source.

This articles discusses how to use the Microsoft Data Link files that ship with Microsoft Windows 2000.

Previous versions of Microsoft Data Access Compoments (MDAC) provided the ability to make a data link (.udl) directly from the desktop of your operating system.

With the release of MDAC 2.5, you can either access Data Links from the Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Data Environment, or from the Microsoft Windows 2000 shell.

UdlW2000.exe is a self-extracting executable file that contains a .reg file that makes the Microsoft Data Link shortcut available on the Windows 2000 shell.

After you run the .reg files contained in this download, you may not see the desired effects immediately. However, as the operating system has time to read the new values from the registry, the changes will appear. A restart will force this to happen, but is not required.

The following file is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center:
Release Date: Jan-11-2001

For additional information about how to download Microsoft Support files, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Microsoft scanned this file for viruses. Microsoft used the most current virus-detection software that was available on the date that the file was posted. The file is stored on security-enhanced servers that help to prevent any unauthorized changes to the file.

How to Open a Data Link File with Notepad

1. Right-click the Windows 2000 desktop, point to New, and then click Text Document. A new file is created by default (New Text Document.txt).
2. On the Toolsmenu, click Folder Options. On the Viewtab, clear the Hide file extensions for known file types check box and then click OK.
3. Right-click the Text Document you created in step 1, choose Rename, and then change the name and extension of the file to: (Data Link.UDL).
4. A warning might appear, explaining that changing file extensions could cause files to become unusable. Disregard this warning.
5. You can store the (Data Link.UDL) file anywhere on your system or network.
6. Double-click the (Data Link.UDL) file or you can optionally right-click it, and then click Properties. This opens the Data Link Properties dialog box. You are now ready to connect to your data source.

For more information, please refer to the Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows 2000.