I want to allow a user to provide their SQL login credentials, and display local SQL tables, stored procs, etc. in a listing. Is this possible? Note: I do not want to install some local, small SQL variant. I'm talking about the full version of SQL 2005+ that's already sitting on a developer's workstation.
+3
A:
Silverlight provides no mechanism for connecting to a SQL Database directly. You either need to provide a set of web services to interface with your data source or use ADO.NET Data services.
Connecting to a local SQL database using Silverlight alone isn't possible.
Justin Niessner
2009-10-06 03:56:45
+1
A:
Something I almost missed is that you don't want to connect back to a database on the web server. You want information about a possible sql server instance on the user's (developer's) local machine. That isn't possible from within Silverlight alone.
I had thought you might be able to send the credentials on to the web server, have it dynamically generate a connection string, and then use the information_schema views to return lists of tables and views like any other data source. But that won't work.
However, in that scenario the web server is essentially acting as a proxy for your silverlight app. You might be able to build something else to act a proxy instead. Perhaps a small clickonce winforms app. That would install from a web page via hyperlink, so you could craft a link to install it on the page hosting your silverlight app.
Joel Coehoorn
2009-10-06 03:57:13
I guess what I can't get my head wrapped around (new to Siverlight)...Once I have the connection string built server-side where/how do I use the connection string in code, whether it be in a web service or in Silverlight to open an actual SqlConnection object that I could then use to perform queries?
Dave Jellison
2009-10-06 04:03:31
Not in silverlight: you have to submit back to a web server (probably running plain asp.net) and do the work there.
Joel Coehoorn
2009-10-06 04:12:41
Which would require the SQL server to allow a remote connection correct? If that is the case the above comment would be valid, this isn't a Silverlight question. I was hoping to subvert a remote connection via. Silverlight but I may be barking up the wrong tree is seems. I'm at a loss for how, even with credentials, using a web service you could access a local SQL connection as the code would need to run on the client. That was the leap I was hoping to make if that makes sense.
Dave Jellison
2009-10-06 04:17:45
Ah: I see I missed something. You're looking for the local instance on the developer's machine, not a database on the web server. Silverlight won't let you connect to that directly. The gist of my answer still stands: Silverlight won't let you connect directly. But you might be able to get it working through a proxy of some kind.
Joel Coehoorn
2009-10-06 04:22:24
That was my next thought. Sorry I wasn't very clear. My only thought is a browser plugin or something of that nature but I was hoping to avoid that. Thank you for your quick responses! (all of you)
Dave Jellison
2009-10-06 04:25:44
you could maybe do a little clickonce winforms app as your proxy. That looks almost like a web page.
Joel Coehoorn
2009-10-06 04:27:37
Since you made this the accepted answer I'm gonna edit to promote the results of the comments to the answer itself...
Joel Coehoorn
2009-10-06 04:30:51
Yep. Thanks again Joel
Dave Jellison
2009-10-06 04:36:44
A:
With silverlight you cannot access the local machine/network resources. you will need to use wpf/xbap.
Aaron Fischer
2009-10-06 03:57:22
I did look at xbap briefly but the security model at first glance looked prohibitive.
Dave Jellison
2009-10-06 04:05:40
I did look at xbap briefly but the security model at first glance looked prohibitive.
Dave Jellison
2009-10-06 04:06:27