You just made me wish all over again that MS had gone with Python. The code is so much more readable:

import pyodbc

def Test_SQLConnection(Instances):

ret = []

for Instance in Instances:

try:

conn = pyodbc.connect('DRIVER={SQL Native Client};SERVER=' + Instance + ';Trusted_Connection=yes;')

curs = conn.cursor()

curs.execute("SELECT @@SERVERNAME as Name,Create_Date FROM sys.databases WHERE name = 'TempDB'")

for row in curs:

ret.append((row.Name, row.Create_Date))

except:

pass

return ret

No braces (except for the connection string, of course); no $-signs