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Asked: 2026-05-10T22:15:16+00:00

I’m having a problem getting access to a database which lives on a remote

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I’m having a problem getting access to a database which lives on a remote server.

I have a ASP.NET 2.0 webpage that is trying to connect to a database.
The database is accessed via a virtual folder (which I set up in IIS).
The virtual folder points at a remote share which contains the database.

The virtual folder (in the web apps root directory) is pointing at a share on a remote server via a UNC path: 

\\databaseServerName\databaseFolder$\

The virtual folder has ‘read’ and ‘browse’ permissions set to ‘true’.

I store the connection string in the ‘appSettings’ section of the web.config: 

<add key='conStrVirtual' value='Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OleDb.4.0;Data Source=http://webAppServerName/virtualFolderName/databaseName.MDB;Jet OLEDB:Database Password=dumbPassword;'/>

The connection object is declard on my .aspx page: 

Dim objConnVirtual As New OleDbConnection(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings('conStrVirtual'))

Here is the code that tries to use the connection object: 

Public Sub Test()     If objConnVirtual.State <> ConnectionState.Open Then         objConnVirtual.Open()     End If     Dim cmd As OleDbCommand = New OleDbCommand('SELECT * FROM TableName', objConnVirtual)     objDR = cmd.ExecuteReader()     If objDR.Read() Then         response.write('Shazaam! Data shows up here')     End If     objDR.Close()     objConnVirtual.Close() End Sub

When I run the above code I get the following error (on this line of the code ‘objConnVirtual.Open()’:
Exception Details: System.Data.OleDb.OleDbException: Not a valid file name.

I have checked the database name and it is correct (even copy/pasted it to make sure)

If I put the ‘Data Source’ section of the connection string into the address bar of my browser I can successfully see the contents of the share on the remote server.

Not sure if this is a problem with permissions or with the code.
I have googled the crap out of this but have not been able to find a solution.

Any help is much appreciated.

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1 Answer

  1. UPDATE

    First up, thank you to everyone who submitted answers.

    However, we ended up not using the ‘connect to remote database via virtual folder’ method because the complexity of the permissions needed to get this to work was causing us more problems than it was worth. We put the UNC path back into the connection string, which may not be the best way to do this, but is working for us.

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