Creating a universal data location file

Before you can access data from OLE DB, you must provide specific connection information such as:

• the type of data to be accessed
• the server upon which the data resides
• the database in which the data is stored

For example, to connect to an Oracle database, you must specify the Microsoft OLE DB provider for Oracle and provide a server name.

A connection string is a string version of this connection information that you can save and reuse in your applications. You can build this string in the Data Link Properties dialog and associated tabbed pages. Using this interface, you can save this connection string as a data link in the .udl file.

An alternative to using the Microsoft Data Link menu option as described in the following procedure, because some operating systems might not have this option, is to create a .txt file and change the file extension to .udl.