Visual Studio 2015 provider when using .mdf

Question

I'm working on a program that gets data from a database on an .mdf file and populates a listbox with the results. I'm getting an error that says "An OLE DB Provider was not specified in the ConnectionString."

I can't seem to figure out what is the correct string to use for a provider. In my particular case, what am I supposed to do to get it to read the .mdf correctly?

            sConnection = "Data Source=.\\SQLEXPRESS; AttachDbFilename = StudentData.mdf;";
            dbConn = new OleDbConnection(sConnection);
            dbConn.Open();
            sql = "SELECT * FROM StudentData;";

            dbCmd = new OleDbCommand();
            dbCmd.CommandText = sql;

            dbCmd.Connection = dbConn;

            dbReader = dbCmd.ExecuteReader();
            while (dbReader.Read())
            {
                aMember = new
                    Member(dbReader["FirstName"].ToString(),
                    dbReader["LastName"].ToString());
                this.OutputListBox.Items.Add(aMember);
            }
            dbReader.Close();
            dbConn.Close();

Update: I've changed the connection string to:

sConnection = "Provider = SQLNCLI11;" +
                "Data Source = (LocalDB)/MSSQLLocalDB;" +
                "AttachDbFilename = \"c:/users/tevin/documents/visual studio 2015/Projects/DbReader/DbReader/StudentData.mdf\";" +
                "Connect Timeout = 30;";

However now I am getting the errors "Invalid authorization specification" and "Invalid connection string attribute".

Add it as a Data Connection in the Server Explorer (using the Database File data source) and then get the Connection String from the Connection Properties — Zac Faragher, Mar 30 '17 at 00:07

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 30 '17 at 00:35

The value of sConnection seems to be wrong. In this case you should use something like this:

Server=.\SQLExpress;AttachDbFilename=C:\MyFolder\MyDataFile.mdf;Database=dbname;
Trusted_Connection=Yes;

For more information please visit conectionstrings.com

Visual Studio 2015 provider when using .mdf

1 Answers1