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February 19, 2021
Question

Named Pipes Provider: Could not open a connection to SQL Server [53]

  • February 19, 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 1589 views

Hi,

 

we are running a Coldfusion server ver. 10,0,23,302580 which is connected to a MS SQL server ver. 

SQL 2017

 

And users getting that pages are sporadic not loading with error and we see in the log the following message: 

 

ajp-bio-8012-exec-304","02/18/21","12:20:23","appControl","Error Executing Database Query.[Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver][SQLServer]Named Pipes Provider: Could not open a connection to SQL Server [53]."

 

and it can be to any page using a SQL connection. The workaround for the users are to Refresh the page a few times and then they are able to load the page. We do not use Named Pipes on our SQL server. 

 

We have specified the connection string to be: Server=tcp:dbs-**.***.se;Database=***; to force coldfusion not to use Named Pipes, but for some reason Coldfusion still wants to connect using Named Pipes, how can we disable this?

 

thanks for any help or tips

 

best regards

Martin

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

Charlie Arehart
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 23, 2021

Martin, I'm not so sure about your conclusion that cf is using named pipes, based on that error. (I realize that's what it implies. I'm not sure it's what's really happening.) 

 

Instead, consider first that cf10 is from 2012. I don't think it was updated to support sql server 2017.

 

But that "support" would be focused on the driver that cf comes with (the "Macromedia" one in the error message).

 

Have you tried using the free Microsoft jdbc driver? It's easily found and  implemented in cf, if you Google for it. A classic post is this one:

 

https://www.hass.de/content/coldfusion-10-how-configure-data-sources-microsoft-jdbc-driver-40-sql-server

 

And good news for you: he wrote it in the cf10 time frame (but try a later driver).

 

We could say try a later version of CF also (as cf10 and 11 are no longer supported/updated by Adobe, and now cf2016 support/updates ended this month.) The choices now are cf2018 and cf2021, but I realize some folks will refuse to update. We're here with the bailing buckets and chewing gum to help folks keep old boats afloat. 

/Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart. org)
Participant
June 19, 2023

I was searching for some information on this error as it occurs for us randomly as well. It's fairly rare, but we regularly get these and aren't able to figure out why. We're on CF2021 Enterprise (update 5) and using the built-in SQL Server driver. I agree that the error might not actually reflect what is going on, but it's definitely problematic that CF just randomly stops connecting to SQL Server (particularly since it most commonly occurs when customers are trying to check out). 

Community Expert
February 19, 2021

Unless you're actually using Named Pipes to connect to SQL Server from another client, I strongly recommend disabling it in the SQL Server network admin console (I forget what it's called) on the SQL Server box itself. I'm pretty sure that the JDBC client doesn't support Named Pipes at all. For some reason, your database is trying to get it to connect via Named Pipes and that's not going to work.

 

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC
Participant
February 22, 2021

Hi Dave,

thanks for the reply, we are pretty sure that Named Pipes is not enabled on our main database server. We will check that there is no othe linked server that is causing this. But interesting to know that JDBC does not even suppport Named Pipes which leads to the problem to be on the SQL server itself. 

 

best regards

Martin

BKBK
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 22, 2021

Another suggestion: check whether TCP/IP is enabled on SQL Server.

BKBK
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 19, 2021

Uhm, why don't you solve this by enabling named pipes on SQL Server?