How can I connect to a SDF database? No connection string I try seems to work

Question

I\'ve tried literally 50+ different attempts at my connection string for my local database and nothing seems to work. I\'m essentially just trying to open a connection the d

Answer 1

I think the problem you are seeing is that you are trying to use a SqlConnection to connect to a SQL Compact database. The .sdf is a compact database and you have to use the SqlCeConnection to connect to it. You create the connection using this but then you don't use it. Instead you pass in the connection string to the SqlBulkCopy object which implicitly creates a SqlConnection from that string. I'm assuming it is on that line where you are getting the error. If you notice the namespace of the SqlBulkCopy is System.Data.SqlClient. The reason you are seeing the error is that its trying to go through SQL Server to make the connection and cannot resolve your connection string to a SQL Server database. Unfortunately, I don't think the System.Data.SqlServerCe has the equivalent to the SqlBulkCopy. Stick to using classes in System.Data.SqlServerCe and things should work as expected. You just will have to do the processing in a more manual fashion.