The following works with Entity Framework 6 Code First, database exists when the connection string is stored in the application configuration file.Ĭustomers with some technical ability should still be shielded from making changes that may break an application. The main reason, the customer has data for the application in a server with a different server name then the developer server or that a server is renamed is another reason and the user has no technical ability to change the configuration file. There are several reasons for changing connection strings stored in the application configuration file after the application has been installed.
Note, when using SqlCredential class it's not possible to stored connection properties in the application configuration file when a user password expires as the algorithm used to encrypt the connection section of theĪpplication configuration file will break, also it's better to prompt users for name and password.Ĭhanging server and or initial catalog at runtime
For a easy to following code sample see the following SqlCredential class to the connection which requires a fair amount of code which should be done when a user has been created in SQL-Server with appropriate permissions assigned to the user to access data. Moving up a level, configure an instance of
In the examples above connections are made with windows authentication, no user name or user password is needed, in this case encrypting the connection string within the configuration file is needed as per the following When a developer first starts out writing code to access database data they usually will write the connection directly in a form as follows. Where connections are in Project.Settings. In this article these issues along with other common challenges with creating connections to server-based databases will be covered along with dynamically changing a connection string stored in an application configuration file Quickly causes using string variables useless and with configuration files when changes to the server name requires updating from the developer’s server name to another server name in the wild it’s best to have a method to change a connection string without This setup works well for personal use applications while distributing an application to friends, co-workers or customers or changing from a development environment to a production environment (and in many cases a test environment) SqlConnectionStringBuilder (there is an example in the accompanying source code) or create temporary project, use the Data wizard to generated a classes access via a TableAdapter or using Entity Framework 6 code first with an existing database.
SqlClient to access tables a connection object is required with a well-formedĬonnection string which may be stored in a string variable or aĭepending on the developer, connection strings can be written directly in code, create a connection string using When working with SQL-Server databases in Windows Forms projects using conventional data providers like