Connection Strings/Data Sources

Hey all,

I'm coming from ASP and I used to have a global connection string accessible to all of my ASP pages that I'd use for all of my data access. This was really convenient because I could easily switch to a backup or local data source for testing/debug by changing the connection string in one place.

Now, I'm using ASP.NET with Web Matrix and I love the drag and drop functionality but its dropping my connection string all over the place. How can I do this and keep my connection string in one spot so I can have the same convenience of switching data sources.

Thanks in advance!
LarryIf you are dropping connection objects, drag and drop functionality wasn't meant for that completely. You could try in your code to switch it to the connection in the web.config in one of the page events before it is used.

In the next version of Visual Studio, and most likely Visual Web Developer, you can use web.config entries in the connection objects.

Brian|||Hmmm...

So what can I do now? Should I define some kind of global string or an application variable with my database connection string and then search and replace all references to the connection string with that?

My application needs to be able to easily switch to a backup data source if the main source goes down.

Thanks in advance!
Larry|||I like the idea better of an n-tier architecture, where you have a data access layer that defines the connection information. However, if that's not for you, then I don't know what to tell you other than define the connection object in your web page. But then that throws off your datadapter or command objects dropped into the form.

I personally always created the database objects in the code because of that. Or look at changing the connection string in one of the page events. I think I got that concept to work in a windows form app, I think it may also work in a page event.

Brian