Bad... Bad ... Bad ...

Take a look on OLE DB IDBPromptInitialize interface.
C++ users (as well some others ;o) can use it to show nice connection dialogs in their applications.

Also I've made suggestion to allow .NET (C# for example) developers to be able do the same. Microsoft most likely will add this in Beta 1 of Whidbey.

Sorry - but for my benefit, what exactly is bad?

I do it like this: Go to desktop, create new text file, change extension to .udl, double click, do what you have to, change back to .txt or throw in *pad.

Using IDBPromptInitialize gets you an OLEDB connect string doesn't it? So it has to be edited for use with the SqlServer provider.

THe UDL approach threw me into an ODBC dialog to construct a connect string. Ugh.

In the absence of a sound reason for not doing so, think I prefer the approach proposed by the OP. At least the string can be used with the SqlServer provider without editing if desired. Of course the hardest part is selecting it to paste into another file.

There is also a project on GotDotNet.com that will manufacture SqlServer or Oracle connect strings from dialog box input and spit out config files ready to use (or at least paste into another config file). It will even encrypt strings encrypted if you wish.

If you want a run-time connection string, I like adding Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects 2.7 Library and Microsoft OLD DB Service Component 1.0 Type Library (both are COM components) then using the following (C#):

MSDASC.DataLinks oDL = New MSDASC.DataLinksClass();
ADODB.Connection conn = New ADODB.ConnectionClass();
objet oConn = (object) conn;
lDL.PromptEdit(ref oConn);

This gives the Windows dialog to point and click whatever connection parameters the user wants, and then conn.ConnectionString holds a string with all those parameters.

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