Intro to SQL Server with ASP.NET - Page 3
       by kirupa  |  25 December 2006

In the previous page, you created a database and defined some table columns. Now, we need to figure out how to get our web pages to communicate with the database. In this page, I will explain how to do that by setting up a connection string.

Setting up the Connection String
Now that you have your database setup, it's time to create a way to add values to it. We will do that by first setting up a connection string that tells our applications and web pages how to communicate with our database:

1. Right click on the dbTest folder and select Add New Item. The familiar Add New Item window should appear. Select Web Form and give it the name Games.aspx. Make sure Visual C# is selected as your language:

[ create a new form called Games.aspx and set the language to Visual C# ]

2. Press OK to create your Games.aspx file. Open your newly-created Games.aspx file and make sure you are in the Design view. Make sure your Toolbox is visible (View | Toolbox) also:

[ make sure your Toolbox panel is displayed ]

3. From your toolbox, scroll down the Data subsection and double-click on the SqlDataSource control:

[ find and double-click on the SqlDataSource control ]

4. After double-clicking the SqlDataSource control, a SqlDataSource rectangle will display in your design area. If the SqlDataSource Tasks submenu is not visible over the rectangle, click on the small arrow to display the SqlDataSource Tasks submenu as shown in the following image:

[ click on the arrow to display the SqlDataSource Tasks menu ]

5. From the SqlDataSource Tasks submenu, click on the Configure Data Source link. The Configure Data Source window will appear. You should see a really long drop-down menu to the left of the New Connection button. Click on that and select the name of our database, Games.mdf:

[ select the name of your database, Games.mdf ]

6. After selecting Games.mdf, press the Next button. In the next screen, you will be asked if you want to provide a name to save your Connection String into. Enter the name GamesConnection and press Next:

[ save this connection as GamesConnection ]

7. In the next page, you get to pick which of your columns will be retrieved. We will be using all of our data, so check the * box under columns and press Next:

[ when asked to select the columns, check the * checkbox ]

8. After you clicked Next, you should be at the Test Query screen. You can press the Test Query button, but since we have nothing in our database, you shouldn't see any results. Press the Finish button to exit out of the Configure Sql Data Source window.

You have now configured your Connection String. My main goal for doing this was to get our Web.Config file to store information about our database and how to access it. If you open your Web.Config file from your Solution Explorer, you will see a block of text corresponding to the steps we performed earlier:

[ how your connectionStrings node in Web.Config looks like ]

The data for the connection string is difficult to discern without using the wizard, especially if your web site is hosted on localhost or on your file system.

In the next page, let's create a simple input form that sends data to our database.

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