Vikram Lakhotia Blog on Asp.Net, Dot Net, SQL, VIsual Studio, C# etc

ASP.NET 2.0 comes with some great API’s like Membership, Roles API, Profile API, health monitoring API. Etc. These API use the default providers to store data. Like the Membership API uses the SQL Express database by default to store the data. But many a time you want to use other database. I wanted to store the Membership and profile data in the SQL Server 2000 database.

With ASP.NET 2.0 Provider model this can be done in a few steps.

First we create a new database and obtain its connection string.

Next configure the database with ASP.NET schemas. To do these use the aspnet_regsql.exe which is located at C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.xxxxx directory. Use the wizard to create the schema, tables and stored-procedures for built in SQL provider of ASP.NET 2.0.

Now store the connection string in connection string section of the Web.Config.

ASP.NET 2.0 ships with a built-in connection string called “LocalSqlServer” which by default uses SQL express Database. You need to replace this connection string with your new connection string.

<connectionStrings>

        <remove name="LocalSqlServer"//>

        <add name="LocalSqlServer" connectionString="Data Source=Datasource;Initial Catalog=DatabaseName;Integrated Security=True" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"//>

    <//connectionStrings>

You can also change the connectionstring name from LocalSqlServer to something else and configure the existing provider to use this connection string

Hope this helps
Thanks
Vikram