Using the Data Link Properties wizard in .NET code

I had a really hard time finding an example for this code so I decided to blog about it.

With .NET and Microsoft's dedication to documentation in the last couple of years I have really gotten spoiled.  It is pretty rare that I actually dig into .dll's anymore trying to find some obscure functions and how to use them.  These days if I can't find code examples using the Google search engine for something I want to do I will often just find another way around the problem, it just isn't worth spending time trying to dig into the lower levels for a very high level application.  ( Google Chrome is one exception to this, thanks Google for digging for the extra speed, I love it. )

In this case I spent a few minutes searching for a connection string builder.  I didn't find one so I started to role my own.  After a couple of hours of that and realising just how many options there are I decided to try searching again.  I knew one existed, Microsoft uses it in all their apps it seems, just had to find where it was and how to call it.

I found this guy:

http://www.geocities.com/izenkov/

who had essencially made a wrapper around what I was looking for, but there was no source code.  However the fact he did it reinforced my certainty that I would find what I wanted.

Next I ran into Elisabeth who gave me the big break with source code and everything:

[quote source="Elisabeth"]

using MSDASC;
using ADODB;

private string BuildConnectionString()
{
          string strConnString = "";
          object _con = null;
          MSDASC.DataLinks _link = new MSDASC.DataLinks();
          _con = _link.PromptNew();
          if (_con == null) return string.Empty;
          strConnString = ((ADODB.Connection)_con).ConnectionString;
          return strConnString;
}

[/quote]

I did end up having to go to her source ( glad she linked to it ) to get the pretty names of the .dll's that needed to be referenced:

Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects 2.8 Library
Microsoft OLEDB Service Component 1.0 Type Library