This document discusses two ways to connect Mule ESB to a Microsoft SQL server database: Windows authentication and basic authentication. Windows authentication requires configuring a JDBC driver JAR file and DLL, and allows integrating Windows credentials directly in the JDBC URL. Basic authentication requires configuring the JDBC driver JAR and providing username and password in the JDBC URL. Both methods require creating a generic database configuration in Mule and selecting it in the database connector to execute queries against the SQL server database.