Defining Basic Connection Strings

Defining Basic Connection Strings

The data provider uses a connection string to provide information needed to connect to a specific database server. The connection information is defined by connection string options.

The ADO.NET Entity Framework data provider can specify an existing connection in the Entity Framework Wizard, or can define a new connection. The ADO.NET Entity Framework uses information contained in connection strings to connect to the underlying ADO.NET data provider that supports the Entity Framework. The connection strings also contain information about the required model and mapping files. The data provider uses the connection string when accessing model and mapping metadata and connecting to the data source.

The connection string options have the form:

"option name=value"

Each connection string option value pair is separated by a semicolon. For example,

"Server DSN=DEMODATA;UID=test;PWD=test;Host=localhost"

See Table 27 for detailed information about all of the supported connection string options.

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The spaces in the option names are optional.

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All connection string option names are case-insensitive. For example, User ID is the same as user id. However, the values of some options, such as User ID and Password, might be case-sensitive.

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If the connection string does not specify a port number, the data provider uses 1583, the default port number.

Table 1 gives the name and description for each option required for a minimum connection to a PSQL server.

Table 1

Minimum Connection String Options Required

Specifies the name of the data source on the server to which you want to connect, for example, DEMODATA.

Specifies the name or the IP address of the PSQL server to which you want to connect. For example, you can specify a server name such as Accountingserver or an IP address such as 199.226.22.34 (IPv4) or 1234:5678:0000:0000:0000:0000:9abc:def0 (IPv6).

The initial default value is localhost.