Since this seems to come up with some regularity on mailing lists and I happen to be in the midst of a massive SQL Server migration (lucky me) at the moment, I figured I'd set the record straight on this topic once and for all. Named instances in SQL Server are not magic. Like everything else on servers, they run on a port. This named instance nonsense is simply Microsoft's way to get around expecting people to use a port number. (Because as we all know, having to deal with numbered ports is probably the biggest headache anyone in IT has to deal with. Yes, I'm being sarcastic.) Anyway, even though the MS tools would like you to think this is all magic, not only do named instances run on a port, you actually pay a penalty by not referring to the port directly in your connection strings. Why? Because again, there is no magic in IT, and the named instance doesn't mean squat to anything but SQL Server itself. So if you give SQL Server a named instance when trying to connect, there's an additional round trip to the server so SQL Server can translate that named instance you're asking for into a port number and return that to the thing connecting to it, at which point the connection is established using the port number. MS says so themselves here if you don't want to take my word for it. Hope that settles it. Use the port numbers and forget about all this named instance voodoo, because that's all it is. Voodoo.
If you follow me on Google+ you'll know I had a recent rant about Windows Media Center, which after running fine for about a year suddenly decided as of January 29 it was done downloading the program guide and by extension was therefore done recording any TV shows.
I'll spare you more ranting and simply say that none of the suggestions I got (which I appreciate!) worked, and rather than spending more time figuring out why, I decided to try something different.
NextPVR is an awesome free (as in beer, not as in freedom unfortunately ...) PVR application for Windows that with a little bit of tweaking handily replaced Windows Media Center. It can even download guide data, which is apparently something WMC no longer feels like doing.
Background I wound up going down this road in a rather circuitous way. My initial goal for the weekend project was to get Raspbmc running on one of my Raspberry Pis. The latest version of XBMC has PVR functionality so I was anxious to try that out as a …
I'll spare you more ranting and simply say that none of the suggestions I got (which I appreciate!) worked, and rather than spending more time figuring out why, I decided to try something different.
NextPVR is an awesome free (as in beer, not as in freedom unfortunately ...) PVR application for Windows that with a little bit of tweaking handily replaced Windows Media Center. It can even download guide data, which is apparently something WMC no longer feels like doing.
Background I wound up going down this road in a rather circuitous way. My initial goal for the weekend project was to get Raspbmc running on one of my Raspberry Pis. The latest version of XBMC has PVR functionality so I was anxious to try that out as a …
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