Question

1) By default configuration elements have their connectionStringName attribute set to LocalSqlServer, and as far as I know, this attribute refers to connection defined in the element in machine.config file.

a) I assume this connection string refers to database aspnetdb.mdf?!

b) I understand aspnetdb.mdf is used in cases where we don’t manually create membership or profile database ( by calling aspnet_regsql ), but I still don’t understand the purpose of configuration elements having connectionStringName attribute set to LocalSqlServer set? Namely, when and why would they need to access this database?

c) What happens if we manually set membership database via aspnet_regsql and thus don’t use aspnetdb.mdf? How will configuration elements know that we’re not using aspnetdb.mdf and thus instead try to access database we created?

2) If we wanted LocalSqlServer entry from machine.config to point to some other database file, we could do the following:

      <connectionStrings>
        <remove name="LocalSqlServer" />
        <add name=”LocalSqlServer” ...  />
      </connectionStrings>

I understand that the purpose of <remove> element is to cancel any previously declared elements with same name, but in above example we simply changed the attribute of already existing connection, and as such machine.config doesn’t have two connections with same name, so why did we have to include <remove> element?

thanx

Answer 1

From the connectionStrings element article on MSDN:

Connection strings that are contained
in a parent configuration file are
inherited, unless the clear element is
used in the child configuration file.
The following default
connectionStrings element is
configured in the Machine.config file.
Copy Code

<connectionStrings>
    <add name="LocalSqlServer" connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated
        Security=SSPI;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|aspnetdb.mdf;User
        Instance=true" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
</connectionStrings>

So if that section of the config file is not modified, it automatically has that connection string.