Question

I see a couple of DataContext connection string questions. I’m going to try to differentiate this one a bit:

1. How does one construct a generic connection string to a database, localhost | User-PC\User | Some database… (it is hosted/managed by Microsoft SQL 2008)

2. I notice that it is IDisposable. So if I have multiple users hitting my site, my code can only access the database one instance at a time, and has to wait until each instance is disposed, in order for the data to be consistent for each user?

3. Is it possible, by any chance, to somehow enable LINQ in F#-Interactive, and connect to the database from there? I cannot figure out how to enable/load the System.Data dll into fsi. Maybe that is unique to my installation, or it is a common thread? (ie, my installation also does not recognize windows.base.dll–I have to manually get it from programs\reference assemblies).

Anyhow, I’ve pretty much conclusively discovered that

let x = new System.Data.Linq.DataContext("localhost") 

…does not work.

Answer 1

There actually is a somewhat generic way to construct a connection string:

open System.Data.Common
open System.Data.SqlClient

let providerName = "System.Data.SqlClient"
let factory = DbProviderFactories.GetFactory(providerName)
let cnBuilder = factory.CreateConnectionStringBuilder() :?> SqlConnectionStringBuilder
cnBuilder.DataSource <- "localhost"
cnBuilder.InitialCatalog <- "MyDatabase"
cnBuilder.IntegratedSecurity <- true
let connStr = cnBuilder.ConnectionString