A coworker and I are having a discussion and I'm wondering if anyone here knows the actual answer to it.

Say you have a server called Server1 and you have a folder on it called C:\Folder1 which you've shared out. If you open windows explorer on Server1 and navigate to \\Server1\Folder1, I think that you go out to the network and then go back to the same server that you're on, so there's a network trip involved. My coworker thinks that the whole thing is local, so there's no difference between navigating to \\Server1\Folder1 and just going to C:\Folder1.

Also, with databases, if you have a db on the machine and your connection string is ...<yadayada>DataSource=Server1, I think that it again involves a network trip in order to access the database, but the coworker thinks it's the same as using localhost.

Anyone know which of these is correct?