Installing the March Orcas CTP - DataConnections Problems
I recently installed the March CTP of Visual Studio Orcas, particularly to get working with LinQ. However, I noticed that while the standard LinQ operations worked, when I wanted to look at DLinQ (link for VB.Net) I noticed that I could no longer set up a Data Source. The Test Connection option would work fine, but in fact I could not connect to SQL Server, Express, or a file-based database. What's more, I tested in standard 2005, which did not work, and I noticed that an existing ASP.Net project could no longer access it's SQL database, with the following error message: An error occurred creating the configuration section handler for system.data: Column 'InvariantName' is constrained to be unique. Value 'Microsoft.SqlServerCe.Client' is already present.
I found this link that pointed me in the right direction. I found that I did not need to disable the exact lines specified in the post, but that I had a duplicate entry for Microsoft.SqlServerCe.Client, which was the following line:
<add name="SQL Server CE Data Provider" invariant="Microsoft.SqlServerCe.Client" description=".NET Framework Data Provider for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition" type="Microsoft.SqlServerCe.Client.SqlCeClientFactory, Microsoft.SqlServerCe.Client, Version=9.0.242.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91" />
When I commented out this line, my ASP.Net project started working again and the Orcas install Data Sources window started working as well. I did have to Take Ownership of the CONFIG subfolder to edit the file in Vista, by the way.
I was still not able to connect to a File-based database, however. I was receiving the following error: "Failed to generate a user instance of SQL Server due to a failure in starting the process for the user instance. The connection will be closed.". This link resolved that one, though, so now I'm rocking with LinQ!