Connecting to a Database in the SQL Server

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Dave Andrews. Today, I'm going to show you how to connect to a Microsoft SQL Database, in SQL Management Studio. Let's open up SQL Management Studio. By clicking on the Start button, go to All Programs. Let's expand Microsoft SQL Server, and select the Management Studio. This is your connection interface. Basically, for database engine, we're going to want to leave that as database engine, because that's what we're connecting to. The server name is going to be the server that runs your database. I'm using Microsoft SQL Express, so my server is going to be the local computer name, and then a slash and SQL Express. If you're using the full version of Microsoft SQL Server, you would probably just type the SQL name here. You can also click this drop down box, and that's going to scan your corporations network, for any SQL servers that it can see. That takes a little bit of time. Under Authentication, you can choose the type of authentication you'd like to choose. You can either do Windows Authentication, which uses your currently logged in user name and password, or you can do SQL Server Authentication. Now, Windows Authentication has to be enabled on the SQL Server that you're connecting to, and also if you're an administrator on that machine, you'll be an administrator in the SQL Server. I'm going to connect to Windows Authentication. Now, I'm an administrator on this machine, so I can see all the databases, and administrate them. If I had chosen SQL Server Authentication here,I would type in my SQL Login, that had been given to me by the administrator, and my password. Since I am an administrator, I know the SA User's password, which is the Super User in SQL Server. I'm just going to type in that password for SA, which is using SQL Server Authentication now, and hit Connect. It's that easy to connect to a database. My name is Dave Andrews, and I've just showed you how to connect to a Microsoft SQL database, using SQL Administration Studio."