Question

I am developing a site using ASP.NET, SQL 2008 and LINQ. I want to ask about the connection string. I have made a class like that to get the datacontext in each page:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;

public static class DatabaseConnection
{
    static DataClassesDataContext datacontext;    
    public static DataClassesDataContext getConnection()
    {
       datacontext = new DataClassesDataContext(@"Data Source=localhost;Initial Catalog=dbname; Integrated Security=True");
        return datacontext;
    }
}

Is that a correct way to get the connection in each page?

Also about ‘Data Source’, when I deploy the site what will it be? And what is the difference between data source and address keywords?

Answer 1

That is a valid way of getting the data context instance, yes. You can use Data Source or Server I believe.

Please be aware that DataContext is IDisposable, so make sure it’s not left hanging around after usage, I tend to do:

using (var context = DataHelper.GetContext())
{
   // Stuff.
}

Also, you should really put your connection strings in the configuration file:

<connectionStrings>
   <add name="Live" connectionString="blah;"/>
</connectionStrings>