One of the advantages of being on the Database Docs team at Microsoft is that I get to work with amazing people, which means we can respond quickly to customer issues. Recently, a Microsoft customer who was doing an online training course to learn SQL Server, wondered what the tcp: means at the start of a connection string in an Azure Data Studio dialog box, and what other protocols there might be.
After assuming that there was an article explaining this, my colleagues and I discovered that there was not. While it is true that this information is buried in articles about OLE DB and SQL Native Client connectivity, there isn’t a high-level article explaining the protocol:instance,port in a straightforward way when connecting to SQL Server.
That was true until today. Check it out at Connect to the Database Engine.
Thank you to the customer for asking for more information. I love that we can deliver new, task-based content, based on customer feedback. Sometimes the planets align, and we can do it in under a week.