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Fairly simple question about connection strings using an ASP.Net MVC web application with a SQL server Database.

I created a Web application which uses a database, using the default templates for an MVC 5 application using Visual studio 2014.

I am moving my application over to a IIS and sql server express database (2014) and I see that the database my application uses is a localDB (has a .mdf extension) what I need to know is how to attach it to my SQL Server Express database. (The development Machine and the Server are separate machines)

I have attached it to the server and have a login "IIS APPPOOL\DefaultAppPool" for my IIS to be able to use the server. Here I have granted the login read and write permission to the database "aspnet-owinTest-20140519094353" and my connection string in IIS is 

Server=KEVIN-PC\SQLEXPRESS;Database=aspnet-owinTest-20140519094353;Integrated Security=true

The default connection string when building my application is:

<add name="DefaultConnection" connectionString="Data Source=(LocalDb)\v11.0;AttachDbFilename=|DataDirectory|\aspnet-owinTest-20140519094353.mdf;Initial Catalog=aspnet-owinTest-20140519094353;Integrated Security=True" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />

If anyone can please give me a hand with this. My application simply throws an error

Error. An error occurred while processing your request.

This is the default MVC error.

Also are there any ways where I can see what happened? As in a log of sorts, I checked in the IIS log and there did not seem to be any information that would help me. Would it be better for me to just have a login that used a Username/Password rather than using Windows Authentication?

Erik Philips
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Kevin
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  • You can check the Event Logs of the server in order to see the error message. Although longer term you should implement better error logging (such as [Elmah](https://www.nuget.org/packages/Elmah.MVC/)). – mason Jun 27 '14 at 13:51
  • Event logs of the server only tell me that the database has been spun up, but reveals nothing about the actual error that is occurring, I don't know why it will give this error. On my development server the database works fine. On my IIS server it throws that error. – Kevin Jun 27 '14 at 13:58

2 Answers2

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I believe I found what I was looking for:
How to deploy ASP.NET MVC 4 application using localDB to local IIS on Windows 7?

This did the trick, though probably not a good idea for production server.

I guess one would have to do some type of restore on the SQL server from the .mdf.

All one has to do is publish their files, drop them in the wwwroot folder (along with the app_data folder containing your database and logs) and set the pool to local and you should be set.

Community
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Kevin
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If you are quite new to Visual Studio and facing this error, the very first thing I would suggest to check is INCLUDE all the files from the project. If there are some dependent folders or files which are left as excluded, this very error message is thrown back to browser.

To do this, first click on the icon of "Show All Files" and check for any of the expected files which you created/added but didn't include in the project. If you find one, then right click and include it.

If there is any quicker way to identify/avoid any such excluded files/folders issues, then please share below in comments.

Jay
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