Best Way To Test To See If The Database Is Running?

Hello all-
I need to check to see if the database is running before I begin all sorts of processing and figured I would do something like this.  Any better ways to do this?  I want to check to see if the db is up and running and also check to make sure I can connect to it.

Private Function DatabaseRunning() As Boolean

'Checks to see if the database is up and running.Dim objDataConnection As SqlConnection = New SqlConnection(ConnectionString)

Try

objDataConnection.Open()Catch ex As Exception

Return False

End Try

objDataConnection.Close()

Return True

End Function