# Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Creating a Universal Data Link (UDL)

It's often nice, while working with BizTalk (or any other MS product, for that matter) to have UDL files available to allow you to quickly setup your connections to various databases.  A UDL file is essentially a file that saves connection information, making it available for future use.

To create a UDL file, follow these steps:

  1. Open a folder (or use the desktop) and create a new text file (right-click --> New --> Text Document).
  2. Rename the extension from ".txt" to ".udl".  Ignore the warning message.
  3. Double-click the new UDL file.
  4. Configure your database connection settings.

  5. Once you've been able to successfully test your connection, click the OK button.

That's it!  It's that simple!  Now your UDL file is available for future use.

Best of luck!

Tools
posted on Tuesday, April 03, 2007 8:32:28 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)  #    Comments [4]
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Sunday, June 17, 2007 9:09:30 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Hi, how to create a UDL I know, but with your sugestion to use biztalk, I started to think... it's possible to configure this receive location and send port to use this UDL? I`ll try.

tks
Douglas
Monday, June 18, 2007 3:21:45 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Douglas,

The benefit of the UDL file is that it allows you to store the attributes of a connection string so that you do not have to continually construct the connection string. With some of the BizTalk adapters (such as the SQL and DB2 adapters) you can point to an existing UDL file rather than continually re-define a database connection string.

After you have configured the BizTalk adapters, and can successfully connect to the database, BizTalk no longer uses the UDL file. The UDL file is only used intially, and is no longer referenced by BizTalk. For example, if you were to export your bindings, you'll see that your ports contain the connection string defined by the UDL file, but no reference to the UDL file itself.

Does that help to clarify?

Best of luck!
Wade
Tuesday, June 19, 2007 1:48:39 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Hi Wade, yes I saw five minutes ago, unsuccessfully :)

I understand your comment. My problem is to deploy my solution to production, because the Sql Server aren't the same. When I deploy, with the "Export Bindings" unchecked, and I Stop the solution in production to import, sometimes the bindings lost, and I need to reconfigure all Sql Connections again.

Now I'll try to export binddings in the production server, and after deploy, if the information was lost, I import the bindings. Do you have a trick in this cases?

Thanks a lot. Sorry the english :))
Douglas Vega
Tuesday, October 02, 2007 9:17:35 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
I am trying to use the .udl strategy in a DBLookup functoid within a map as I have seen before. It all works fine but my question also relates to how this can be deployed accross environments (Dev, QA, Prod) where the connection information will change?

I have no idea if or how this .udl information gets cached ?

Michael
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