Referencing a Connection String in Your Application

As a programmer, you can enable your end users to build, save, and access connection strings and .udl files within your own applications. You can invoke the data link user interface programmatically whenever you need the user to specify what data to access.

The information that is returned from the data link user interface can be used to create OLE DB data source objects (DSOs). For more information about creating data source objects, see the IDataInitialize interface. This interface is part of core OLE DB.

Programmatically Accessing the Data Link User Interface

You can call the data link API from any application development tool that supports the access of COM objects such as Microsoft® Visual C++®.

To access the data link API from applications that can directly access a COM interface, such as C++, use the IDBPromptInitialize interface. This interface is part of core OLE DB.

See Also

Data Link API Overview

Connection String Syntax