Connection strings settings

Information on the connection strings settings section

The connection strings settings section contains the connection string to the database Umbraco will connect to. This section is similar to what is used by default in .NET Core. The important thing is that the key for the connection string Umbraco will use is "umbracoDbDSN". It is also important to know that this section is outside the Umbraco.CMS section, and is therefore in the root of the config.

An connection strings config can look like this:

{
  "ConnectionStrings": {
    "umbracoDbDSN": "Data Source=|DataDirectory|/Umbraco.sqlite.db;Cache=Private;Foreign Keys=True;Pooling=True",
    "umbracoDbDSN_ProviderName": "Microsoft.Data.SQLite"
  }
}

We recommend using private cache for SQLite. You can read more on why shared cache is discouraged in the official SQLite documentation.

The connection string used here is an SQLite connection string, that will connect to a data in the file Umbraco.sqlite.db located in /umbraco/Data .

Umbraco currently supports using either a Microsoft SQL Server or a SQLite database. Both of these options will have different connection strings. For more information about the specific connection strings, see:

• SQL Server 2019 connection strings

• SQLite connection strings

If you're using Umbraco 9 SQL Server Compact database is supported instead of SQLite.

Provider name

Because Umbraco cannot determine the provider name from the connection string in all cases. Umbraco follows Microsoft's convention for provider names, which involves specifying it as a postfix in the connection string name.