Easily switching ConnectionStrings on publish to Azure

Question

I'm currently building an Azure Web Role. I am testing this project against a local database server on localhost. Then, when confident that the project is working, I publish it to Staging on Windows Azure.

However, I also have to remember to change the connection string to point to the live SQL server on SQL Azure before deploying, and then change it back to localhost afterwards.

Is there any nice way to automate this, or perhaps a different process to take to avoid the issue altogether? For example is there a way to have a configuration file for Azure that isn't updated with every deploy?

Answer 1

You might want to check this blog post. The scripts are actually included in this guide. (see the download section).

Answer 2

I ended up just referencing the machine name and whether or not I was using Azure, dynamically switching the ConnectionString I referenced accordingly.