Some of you may want to connect to our SQL Server database on IISQLSRV from your computer at home. However, for security reasons, it is not possible to directly connect to IISQLSRV from outside the CSE network. All connections must go through a terminal server.
However, it is possible to connect via remote desktop to a server in the CSE network or create a TCP tunnel, which redirects a TCP connection to a local port on your computer to a remote IP and port, in this case IISQLSRV's port 1433. The tunnel can be established as long as you have an SSH connection to one of our department's linux machines.
Instructions on connecting to a terminal server via several remote desktop clients is described here.
For our class, we can use this tunnel in two ways: First, we can install SQL Server Management Studio (the client program for SQL Server) locally, connect to IISQLSRV through the tunnel, and directly run SQL queries using a graphical interface. Second, we can write a Java program which establishes a JDBC connection to IISQLSRV through the tunnel. In this case we do not need to install SQL Server locally.
In both cases, we first need to create a tunnel. If you are running Windows, you can use a GUI SSH client. If you have a Mac or Linux machine, you can use the command line SSH command.
Open a shell and run the following command:
ssh -L 1433:iisqlsrv.cs.washington.edu:1433 attu.cs.washington.edu
Before connecting to IISQLSRV with SQL Server Management Studio, you need to
install SQL Server locally, since Management Studio comes with SQL Server.
You can download an
evaluation version from Microsoft, or you can download a perpetually
licensed version through
UW CSE's Microsoft software program.
You can then start SQL Server Management Studio locally and choose the
following connection settings:
Server Name: 127.0.0.1
Authentication: SQL Server Authentication
User: YOUR IISQLSRV USERNAME
Password: YOUR IISQLSRV PASSWORD
Make sure your SSH connection remains open while you are using Management Studio.
You can also connect to IISQLSRV using JDBC. Again, ensure that you have SSH connection
and set up a tunnel as explained above. In your dbconn.config, you can then use the following
JDBC connection string
"jdbc:sqlserver://127.0.0.1;database=imdb_new;"
You do not need to install SQL Server on your local machine, if you are connecting using JDBC; you only need the JDBC driver for SQL Server.