Data Entities Connection String Problem

Question

I must have changed something somewhere, but damned if I can figure out what it is.

I have a DAL that handles all my data access (as is a DAL's wont) to my SQL Server DB. This includes the Entity Model, the repository classes and the connection string in the App.Config file.

Somewhere along the piece, I must have changed something and am now getting the following exception every time I try to view a page on my MVC application:

The specified named connection is either not found in the configuration, not intended to be used with the EntityClient provider, or not valid.

This is any page that inherits <IEnumerable<DataAccess.Layer.Class>>. What am I missing?

Connection String:

<add name="JobTrackEntities" 
     connectionString="metadata=res://*/JobTrackDataModel.csdl|res://*/JobTrackDataModel.ssdl|res://*/JobTrackDataModel.msl;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string='Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;AttachDbFilename=&quot;C:\Users\Phil\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\JobTrack\trunk\JobTrack\App_Data\JobTrack.MDF&quot;;Integrated Security=True;User Instance=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=True'" providerName="System.Data.EntityClient" />

Designer.cs snippet:

public JobTrackEntities() : 
        base("name=JobTrackEntities", "JobTrackEntities")
{
    this.OnContextCreated();
}
/// <summary>
/// Initialize a new JobTrackEntities object.
/// </summary>
public JobTrackEntities(string connectionString) : 
        base(connectionString, "JobTrackEntities")
{
    this.OnContextCreated();
}
/// <summary>
/// Initialize a new JobTrackEntities object.
/// </summary>
public JobTrackEntities(global::System.Data.EntityClient.EntityConnection connection) : 
        base(connection, "JobTrackEntities")
{
    this.OnContextCreated();
}

Answer 1

At the risk of getting a down vote I notice, whenever i use a S2L dbml class that I run into the same problem when i make a change to the dbml file via the interface and not in code.

it resets my connection string and i need to change it back to read from web.config.

don't know if this is your issue @Phil.

if not, could you provide more information?

Answer 2

If you are referring your ADO.NET entity project in another project then take a look at

http://blogs.msdn.com/bindeshv/archive/2009/09/04/referring-ado-net-entity-project-in-a-different-project.aspx

Answer 3

The only other thing I can see that may cause a problem is the use of the hard coded path. Have you tried inserting a \?

C:\\Users\\Phil\\Documents\\Visual Studio 2010\\Projects\\JobTrack\\trunk\\JobTrack\\App_Data\\JobTrack.MDF

Also I trust you've checked and double checked the path is correct? :)

Have you tried getting the server path and then adding app_data\jobtrack.mdf to it?

Have you tried getting rid of the path entirley? I ask because, and I forget under what circumstances this is correct, .Net will infer the path and app_data folder when attaching to a database. again, you need to research this.

Also sometimes running the ASP.NET Configuration utility can fix the project, break the project or identify where the problem is.