Question

Working with Azure web role that communicates to a SQL Azure database. Currently when I generate an edmx file for the SQL Azure database the connection strings + the username password are added to web.config file. I did a search and there were several entries on how to encrypt web.config/how to use that to switch between dev and prod but I am thinking of moving conn string out of web.config.

Is there a way by which I can move the connection string to the service definition file? Is that a recommended approach? If I move the connection string elsewhere can I still use the edmx and generated objectcontext classes (cause my existing code uses the automatically generated entity class).

Answer 1

It is best to move your connection strings into service config file. This allows you to switch over to a different SQL Azure database w/o redeployment. Switching to a different SQL Azure database w/o redeployment is useful when one has crashed or is timing out and you have a backup ready on a different server to switch over to.

You will need to initialize your object contexts by providing the connection string separately however.

Use the RoleEnvironment.IsAvailable to find out if you’re running under Azure and the following code to read the setting in .cscfg:

var connectionString = RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue(“ConnectionString”);