Question

I can’t find how my connectionString syntax is wrong. Can anyone suggest a way to figure this out? I am having a difficulty using EF with my connection string. I am new to EF.

• I am using Sybase Anywhere 12 database.
• I’m using the Table-First ObjectContext with EDMX in a separate class library refenced by a web application.
• I’m using a Ninject Module in my class library to bind my repositories.
• I’m using a ODBC DataStore called “Test”
• Other information EF 4.3.1.0, .NET 4, VS2010
• My main web application web.config has the EF connection string copied to it as:

<connectionStrings>
<add name="Entities"connectionString="metadata=res://*/MyEntities.csdl|res://*/MyEntities.ssdl|res://*/MyEntities.msl;provider=iAnywhere.Data.SQLAnywhere;provider connection string=&quot;UserID=aUser;Password=aPassword;DataSourceName=Test&quot;" providerName="iAnywhere.Data.SQLAnywhere"/>
</connectionStrings>

When I initialize my Entity/ObjectContext in my Repository (see using statement below) it returns an error: “The specified named connection is either not found in the configuration, not intended to be used with the EntityClient provider, or not valid.”

        using (var context = new Entities())
        {
           return {Linq to Entity here}
        }

I turned on CLR exceptions on the debugger and found the code throws the error in the .NET Framework here:

EntityConnection.cs

effectiveConnectionOptions = new DbConnectionOptions(setting.ConnectionString, EntityConnectionStringBuilder.Synonyms, false);

edmx designer generated:

 /// <summary>
        /// Initializes a new Entities object using the connection string found in the 'Entities' section of the application configuration file.
        /// </summary>
        public Entities() : base("name=Entities", "Entities")
        {
            this.ContextOptions.LazyLoadingEnabled = true;
            OnContextCreated();
        }

I can see my connection string there, so it is having a difficult time parsing the connectionString. I have tried many different permutations of syntax and haven’t found anything it accepts including:

• Explicitly naming the assembly for entity files instead of a wildcard(e.g. metadata=res://MyDomain/MyEntities.csdl…)
• Using Sybase friendly ODBC attributes such as UID instead of UserID, PWD instead of Password, and DBN instead of DataSourceName.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I got everything working and the only reason I can think of is that I deleted my ASP .NET 4.0 temp files. Also, I must add I changed my process from using an integration test to test this piece to using a unit test. I did not do unit tests first, because our build server does not have a database on it.

Once I was able to prove that it was working there, I decided to delete my temp files. After that, everything started working properly. So, some sort of cache issue was occurring in my application. I used the same connectionString that I mentioned above.

Actually, I used the domain name of the Metadata “metadata=res://MyDomain/MyEntitities.csdl” rather than */MyEntities.csdl. I don’t plan on changing the domain any time soon. In fact, that is just what may have caused some of the issue, because I had changed the location, name, and namespace of MyEntities.Domain where the EF was.