Where to store database connection config?

Try these:
http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/showtopic45321.htm
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/adodotnetdataproviders/thread/9a8c9f5a-092e-4c4a-87bb-9f35d8f55da1

Arun

In your app.config
<add key="Datasource" value="Initial Catalog=db;Data Source=myserver;UID=username;PWD=password;pooling=true;max pool size=200;timeout=180" />

Thanks for the above.

I might be doing this wrong - sorry if I picked it up wrong. But my concern with this approach is that when I build the release of my winform application these config details will be in my exe.config file and viewable to the world. My user name and password to databases will be there. The purpose of the application is to provide limited interaction with the database. I don't want them to be able to access the config details and manipulate the underlying database.

so right now my app.config has the below:

  <connectionStrings>
    <add name="DEV"
         connectionString="Driver={SYBASE ASE ODBC Driver};Srvr=DSPP_R2LX3;Uid=john;Pwd=1721;Database=CLIENT_DB;Port=5034"
         providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
  </ connectionStrings>

If I'm to go with this approach I'd need to be able to hide this somehow?

Sorry to complicate things!

You have a couple of options:

1. Store the connection string as separate entities in the app.config file:

 <appSettings>
   <add key="DataSource" value="ServerName"/>
   <add key="InitCatalog" value="DBName"/>
   <add key="UserName" value="[EncryptedUserName]"/>
   <add key="Password" value="[EncryptedPassword]"/>
 </appSettings>

and then build your connection string in code after decrypting the username and pwd values.

2. Create a public class called ConnectionStrings.cs and store all of your connectionstrings as static string members of the class. The downside of doing this is that if any of the parameters of the connectionstring change, you'll have to re-compile your code.

Arun

nmarun, thanks for the rapid reply.

sorry, but i'm going to throw some more questions at you.

Option 2 seems like a non-runner. So lets focus on option 1

As I mentioned I've multiple database config to store between prod, uat, dev etc. If I use <appSettings>

(1) Will I need to do something like:

   <add key="DEV1DataSource" value="ServerName"/>
   <add key="DEV1InitCatalog" value="DBName"/>
   <add key="DEV1UserName" value="[EncryptedUserName]"/>
   <add key="DEV1Password" value="[EncryptedPassword]"/>
   <add key="DEV2DataSource" value="ServerName"/>
   <add key="DEV2InitCatalog" value="DBName"/>
   <add key="DEV2UserName" value="[EncryptedUserName]"/>
   <add key="DEV2Password" value="[EncryptedPassword]"/>
   <add key="DEV3DataSource" value="ServerName"/>
   <add key="DEV3InitCatalog" value="DBName"/>
   <add key="DEV3UserName" value="[EncryptedUserName]"/>
   <add key="DEV3Password" value="[EncryptedPassword]"/>

Doesn't seem very tidy

(2) How will I call this from code?

Thanks again. Sorry to be a pest :-S