Question

Have just started converting an existing job tracking system into an ASP.NET MVC application. I’m failing miserably at getting this thing off the ground. I’m getting this error

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible.

With the following connection string

<add name="ApplicationServices"
     connectionString="User ID=sysdba;Password=masterkey;Database=localhost:C:\\USINGFIREBIRD.FDB;"
     providerName="FirebirdSql.Data.FirebirdClient" />

FirebirdClient has been added to windir\assembly using gcutil

This is probably a very dumb question, but does USINGFIREBIRD.FDB have to exist? Or will it be automatically created? Regardless, with the file created it does not work.

Edit:

Ok so in the end I was having so much trouble that I decided to start fresh.

First thing I discovered was that the .NET 4 assembly cache has moved to windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly. I saw that FirebirdClient was not in here so I had to figure out how to get it in there. I used Visual studio 2010 command prompt to add the assembly with GCUTIL.

Then I followed the information here

Then create a new asp.net mvc project, register your database in the server explorer, then add add an ado.net model class and have it auto generated from your database.

I’m writing this rather hastily as I’m about to leave work, hope it helps someone.

Answer 1

The file must exist and it must be a proper Firebird database, ie you can’t just create an empty file named “USINGFIREBIRD.FDB”. To create an Firebird database you can use the isql command line tool installed with Firebird.

BTW the error message says The server was not found or was not accessible – are you sure the Firebird service is running?