Introduction:
In this article we are going to see how to get the connection string for the newly created SQL Azure Database using the Management portal in SQL Azure.
Overview:
After we create a new server with a new database, in order to proceed further to use the SQL Azure database in our application for processing the data we need to have a connection string. Normally we write our connection strings based on the parameters like data source, user name, password etc. and prepare a string which has the connection properties. But with SQL Azure by default the connection string will be prepared and be provided ready for our development process. Let us see how to get the connection string from the Azure portal step by step.
Steps:
Log in to the Azure portal using the following link. You will see the screen look similar to below.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/
Login to the portal using your Microsoft Windows Live credentials with Azure credentials to the management portal and you will see the screen as shown in the screen below:
Now we can see the Database Menu at the bottom left; click on that to go to the Database Subscription window as shown in the screen below:
Clicking on the subscription name will show the complete details of the server created and the new database created as shown in the screen below:
Now we will create a new database for our learning purpose called LearnAzure (Check my existing article on how to create a database using Azure portal) and we can see the database listed as shown in the screen below:
Now click on the database server name listed at the right side menu and we will see the list of databases available on the server.
Now select the database for which we need to get the connection string and we can see some information of the database as highlighted in the screen below.
On the highlighted items at the right side corner menu we can find an option Connection string with a small button on it. Clicking on that button will pop-up a window as shown in the screen below.
In the screen below we can see 3 different connection strings popped up by the portal as listed below:
As per our requirement we can copy the connection string and use it in our development process. If we can see the connection string we can find the complete server details with username and password on to it as shown in the screen below:
In the connection string shown in the following screen, if we can see the password then it is exposed for viewing and it's by default that they specify with mypassword. We need to copy the whole connection string to the development environment and change the password to the original authenticated one which we have given on registration.
Conclusion:
In this series of articles we have seen how to get the connection string of the Azure database created using the Azure management portal and the connection strings created automatically by the Azure portal.