title: ASP.NET Web APP set up with a server with no SQL Server installed
body: <p>I have an ASP.NET 2 (very old) web app that I am trying to migrate to a new server. BTW, I am a complete ASP.NET noob but have a good amount experience with other web technologies. </p>
  
  <p>In the <code>web.config</code>, I can see the following connection string XML:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;connectionStrings&gt;
      &lt;add name="myCon" 
           connectionString="Data Source=DEVELOP\DEV_SQL2008R2;Initial Catalog=QO2_New;Persist Security Info=True;User ID=sa;Password=q"/&gt;
  &lt;/connectionStrings&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I did "nslookup" on the machine name 'DEVELOP' and RDP into the server. To my surprise, I don't see any SQL Server process running. Also, there is no SQL Server installed on that server. I am 100% that the app is running and I am very confident that there are content that comes from the database. I also did a search on the code base and it seems like the connection string is being used.</p>
  
  <p>On a side note, we do have some other databases on separate machines. My questions are the following:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Can the machine <code>DEVELOP</code> somehow redirect the DB connection to somewhere else? If yes, how do I find out which IP is it being redirected at?</li>
  <li>If DB connection cannot be redirected, then what is going here exactly? </li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Unfortunately, I have very little people whom I can ask what is going with this app. Any tips that you can share is much appreciated.</p>