Users can only connect to database servers when the database servers are running. Database servers are configured to automatically start when the computer on which they are installed is started. To prevent users from connecting to the database server, you can stop or pause it.
Stopping the database server drops existing connections and prevents new ones; pausing prevents new connections but existing connections remain. You might stop a database server if an invalid connection persists to the database server, for instance, if a connecting application crashed but the connection remained, or you might stop or pause the database server before performing maintenance tasks such as upgrading the SQL Server Express instance.
Once maintenance tasks are complete, you can restart the database server using either the start or resume commands.
Only Windows administrators can stop, pause, start, or resume a database server.
Pause or stop a database server
In most cases, you should pause the database server rather than stopping it. Stopping the database server kills all current connections. If users are editing when you stop the database server, their changes could be lost; therefore, be sure there are no active, valid connections being made to the database server before you stop it.
Before you can stop or pause a database server, you must disconnect from it.
- Log in as a Windows administrator user that is also a server administrator, start ArcMap, and open the Catalog window.
- Right-click your database server connection in the Catalog tree and click Disconnect.
- Right-click the database server again and click Pause or Stop.
If you click Pause, the Microsoft SQL Server Express instance is paused, preventing new connections from being made to the database server but preserving existing connections. If you click Stop, the Microsoft SQL Server Express instance is shut down, disconnecting all existing connections and preventing any new connections from being made to the database server.
Restart the database server
Once you finish the maintenance task that required you to pause or stop the database server, you must restart it before users can connect to it again. If you stopped the database server, the operation to restart it is Start. If you paused the database server, the operation to restart it is Resume.
- Log in as a Windows administrator user that is also a server administrator, start ArcMap, and open the Catalog window.
- Expand the Database Servers node in the Catalog tree.
- Right-click the database server you need to restart.
- To restart the database server, do one of the following:
- If your database server was stopped, click Start.
- If your database server was paused, click Resume.
- Double-click the database server to reconnect to it.