Client Network Utility is a tool supplied with SQL Server or MDAC. It allows you to create a mapping between a SQL Server instance and a client computer. For example, if you connect to a SQL Server over the Internet, you can alias the IP address of let's say 176.24.122.78 as MyServer, then anytime you try to connect to MyServer (using the connection string or DNS) from the computer where the alias was created, SQL Server will connect to 176.24.122.78. You can alias computers on the same network as well, it's very handy for redirecting applications to a temporary database server while the primary server is down.

It also lets you define what protocol to use, the default is TCP/IP but somethimes you may want to use Named Pipes, so in this case you could create an alias called MyServerNP, link it to MyServer and select Named Pipes as the protocol to be used. Then when you use MyServerNP in the connection string, the connection will use Named Pipes instead of TCP/IP.

In your case you want to create an alias that would basically turn a named instance name to a default name by mapping YourServer to YourServer\YourInstance. Then when your application tries to connect to YourServer, under the covers it will be redirected to YourServer\YourInstance.

Roman

>I am a little new at this. Could you go into some more detail?
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>Kelly