How do I use machine.config connection strings in the XSD design view?

The subject is the question.

To address deployment issues, we are going to have the same connection string defined on each of our development, test and production servers, but with different connection parameters to point to our development, test and production databases respectively.

The machine.config on our developer's workstations also has the correct connection string defined.

The problem occurs when trying to get the designer to recognize this connection string when adding tables to the dataset in design view. It wants to either use a connection string based on Server Explorer entries or force you to create a new connection string on the fly.

If I allow it to "roll its own" and then go back in and directly edit the appropriate files, and then run the app, it properly picks up the connection string from machine.config, but of course this is working against the designer rather than with it.

Is there some way to get the designer to see connection strings from machine.config

Thanks,

LPatrick

Visual C#8

I have the same problem, so if any one has an idea

This is a huge problem with the new dataset designer in 2005. I'm not even sure why a dataset has any connection information in it. It's a dataset. In our case it's even worse than yours because we get our connection string from a database based on user, application and machine.

Anyone from MS have a comment on this I've looked in the xsd file, and I see that there is a section called "Connections" but I can't find any documentation on how this can be set, what the parameters are or how it's used by the system.