Fast database access test from .Net

Question

What would be a very fast way to determine if your connectionstring lets you connect to a database? Normally a connection attempt keeps the user waiting a long time before notifying the attempt was futile anyway...

Answer 1

Shorten the timeout on the connection string and execute something trivial.

The wait should be about the same as the timeout.

You would still need a second or two though.

Answer 2

You haven't mentioned what database you are connecting to, however. In SQL Server 2005, from .Net, you can specify a Connection Timeout in your connection string like so:

server=<server>;database=<database>;uid=<user>;password=<password>;Connect Timeout=3

This will try to connect to the server and if it doesn't do so in 3 seconds, it will throw a timeout error.