ASP.NET 3.5: A Beginner's Guide - www.mustafaof.com

Chapter 12: ADO.NET: Hello Database 297SqlConnection: The Command to Hook You UpYou’re familiar with connections to a web server, and connecting to a SQL server is thesame idea but a bit more involved. Using the SqlConnection command, you canconnect to your SQL server that’s built into Visual Studio 2008 or into the SQL Expressthat you can download from Microsoft. (This example uses the Visual Studio 2008application as a database target.)Depending on how your database is arranged, you have different ways to assign theSqlConnection parameters. For example, I have SQL server set up at a remote sitewith my database protected by a username and password. My connect parameter mustinclude the following:1. Server name (for example, myPlace.com)2. User ID (the username for the database)3. Password (the password for the database)4. Name of database (only the database name—not a table name)At the point of connection, I do not need the name of any tables. So when I get ready towork with my remote database, my focus is on the URL to the SQL server and database.I use the following:private SqlConnection hookUp;......hookUp = new SqlConnection("Server=myPlace.com;uid=uname; pwd=pass;database=zero");However, if using Visual Studio 2008, all I need is my localhost address and areference to my SqlExpress server built into Visual Studio 2008. My connection targetand database would beServer=localhost\SqlExpress;Database=VoteNow;However, because the expression will use a string, I have to place a backslash escapecharacter in front of the backslash (\\), making it appear as double backslashes. Also, in thedatabase creation process the logon selection is Windows Authentication (see Figure 12-1);the code must contain Integrated Security set to True to avoid a security problemwhen using Visual Studio 2008 on your computer. So now the connection statement is thefollowing:hookUp = new SqlConnection("Server=localhost\\SqlExpress;Database=VoteNow;"+ "Integrated Security=True");Once that has been completed, the C# operation is set to connect to the database.