Internet Systems Design:
Technologies for Modern Information Systems

 

HOW TO: Create a Database Connection from an ASP Page: Connection String Samples

cached from http://www.nextmill.net/support/databaseconnections.html

The information in this article applies to:

bulletMicrosoft Internet Information Services version  5.0, used with:
bulletthe operating system: Microsoft Windows 2000

 

SUMMARY

There are many ways to connect to a database. This step-by-step article provides sample connection strings for various types of databases and database connections.

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Requirements

The following are the requirements for connecting to a database:

bulletActive Server Pages (ASP) enabled Internet Information Services (IIS) version 5.0 Web server with Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) version 2.5 or 2.6 (with a Jet database engine)

bulletConnectivity to a local or remote database

bulletASP enabled Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.0 or later

 

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Sample Database Connection Strings

These examples are for demonstration purposes only. You must paste this code in your ASP code to make a connection to the specified database. Note that you must change elements such as database name, server name, database location, Data Source Name (DSN), and so on.

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Microsoft Access

Without DSN 

<%
Set Cnn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
Cnn.open "DRIVER={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};DBQ=c:\mydatabase.mdb"
%>

OLE DB 

<%
Set Cnn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
Cnn.open "PROVIDER=MICROSOFT.JET.OLEDB.4.0;DATA SOURCE=c:\mydatabase.mdb"
%>

File DSN 

<% Set Cnn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
Cnn.open "FILEDSN=ADSN"
%>

With DSN and no User ID/Password 

<%
Set Conn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
Conn.open "DSNname"
%>

With DSN and User ID/Password 

<%
Set Conn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
Conn.open "DSNname","username","password"
%>

Without DSN, using a physical path as a reference 

<%
Set Conn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
DSNtest="DRIVER={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)}; "
DSNtest=dsntest & "DBQ=c:\mydatabase.mdb"
Conn.Open DSNtest
%>

Without DSN, using Server.MapPath

NOTE: Server.MapPath is the path from the Web server root. By default, this is C:\Inetpub\Wwwroot. 

<%
Set Conn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
DSNtest="DRIVER={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)}; "
DSNtest=dsntest & "DBQ=" & Server.MapPath("/databases/mydatabase.mdb")
Conn.Open DSNtest
%>

 

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Microsoft SQL Server

OLE DB 

<%
Set cnn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
cnn.open "PROVIDER=SQLOLEDB;DATA SOURCE=sqlservername;UID=username;PWD=password;DATABASE=mydatabase "
%>

With DSN 

<%
Set Conn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
Conn.open "DSN=MyDSN;UID=user;PWD=password;DATABASE=mydatabase"
%>

Without DSN 

<%
Set Conn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
DSNtest="DRIVER={SQL Server};SERVER=ServerName;UID=USER;PWD=password;DATABASE=mydatabase"
Conn.open DSNtest
%>

 

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Microsoft Visual FoxPro

Without DSN 

<%
Set Conn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
ConnStr= "Driver=Microsoft Visual Foxpro Driver; UID=userID;SourceType=DBC;SourceDB=C:\databases\mydatabase.dbc"
Conn.Open ConnStr
%>

 

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Oracle

ODBC with DSN 

<%
Set Conn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
Conn.cursorlocation=adUseClient   
' requires use of adovbs.inc; numeric value is 3
Conn.open "DSN=test;UID=name;PWD=pass"
%>

OLE DB 

<%
Set Conn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
Conn.cursorlocation=adUseClient   
' requires use of adovbs.inc; numeric value is 3
DSNTest="Provider=MSDAORA.1;Password=pass;User ID=name;Data Source=data.world"
Conn.open DSNtest
%>

 

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REFERENCES

For more information on data types, data connections, or MDAC components, see the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/data

 

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