C# ADO.NET Connection String

Connection String is a normal String representation which contains Database connection information to establish the connection between Database and the Application. The Connection String includes parameters such as the name of the driver, Server name and Database name , as well as security information such as user name and password.

Usually Data Providers use a connection string containing a collection of parameters to establish the connection with the database through applications. The .NET Framework provides mainly three data providers, they are:

  1. Microsoft SQL Server
  2. OLEDB
  3. ODBC

Here you can see how to make a connection string to the following ADO.NET Data Providers.

Microsoft SQL Server Connection String

connetionString="Data Source=ServerName;Initial Catalog=Databasename; User ID=UserName;Password=Password"

OLEDB Data Provider Connection String

connetionString="Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0; Data Source=yourdatabasename.mdb;"

ODBC Connection String

connetionString="Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)}; DBQ=yourdatabasename.mdb;"

You have to provide the necessary connection information to the Connection String attributes.

From the following section you can see how to these ADO.NET Data Providers establish connection to the Data Source through C# language .

C# SQL Server Connection

C# OLEDB Connection

C# ODBC Connection