Azure – How to set an ADO.NET Entity Framework connection string via the Windows Azure (Preview) Management Portal

For those using Entity Framework 6 and up, if you want to view the output SQL in Visual Studio (like I did) you have to use the new logging/interception functionality.

Adding the following line will spit out the generated SQL (along with additional execution-related details) in the Visual Studio output panel:

using (MyDatabaseEntities context = new MyDatabaseEntities())
{
    context.Database.Log = s => System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(s);
    // query the database using EF here.
}

More information about logging in EF6 in this nifty blog series: http://blog.oneunicorn.com/2013/05/08/ef6-sql-logging-part-1-simple-logging/

Note: Make sure you are running your project in DEBUG mode.

Are you using Code First/DbContext (your question is filed under entity-framework-4.1)? If so then your connection string should be just a regular connection string - something like this:

<add name="PrimaryDBConnectionString" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"  connectionString="Data Source=(localdb)\v11.0;Initial Catalog=squirtprimary;Persist Security Info=True;Integrated Security=true;MultipleActiveResultSets=True;Application Name=EntityFramework" />    

(You also don't have to do magic with configuration manager - you can just provide the name of the connection string to your ctor like this:

"name=PrimaryDBConnectionString"

and it should work)

On the other hand, if you are not using DbContext but ObjectContext (the exception you get would indicate this - you did not get an exception saying that your connection string is wrong or you are missing the providerName parameter). Then you would need to check if you are able to connect to the database without EF. A few hints:

• you use an IP address as your Data Source - if this is a remote server are you sure you enabled accepting external clients? (AFAIR this is disabled in Sql Server by default)
• you are using user/pwd for authentication - are you sure that these are correct

One of the ways to check the above is to open Sql Server Management Studio on your machine and provide the data you have in your connection string.

The exception you are seeing does not indicate any problems with metadata part. It is specifically about not being able to open the connection to the database.