What is ASP.NET?

ASP.NET, a higher version of ASP, is a programming framework used to create enterprise-class Web Applications. These applications are available to the entire world providing efficient information to their end users. ASP .NET has far more advantages than just a next version of ASP. And it is easily available to configure and use no matter if you have a Dedicated server or a Shared hosting account.

Why to use ASP.NET?

Microsoft has worked well to shift their focus on Internet world from a Windows based platform since 1995 and finally Microsoft introduced Active Server Pages (ASP) in 1996 that was much easy to understand than the orthodox languages like Java, C++ and Perl as it offered the efficiency of ISAPI applications. However ASP scripts were difficult to debug and main, since it consisted unstructured code and interpreted script. ASP also made it difficult for developer to ingrate the web development software as it required to understand many different technologies. If the web application grew more complex and bigger it became harder to maintain as the number of line in source code increased dramatically, specially when you host your application on a Shared hosting server. Therefore, a need of an architecture was required that would allow development of Web application in a consistent way.

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I have seen so many people searching ASP or ASP .NET scripts to backup their MySQL databases. Not only this but my Blog has been getting to many hits for the search term “backup mysql asp”. After seeing the need of so many people for the script I decided to write a VBS script to backup all or single MySQL database on Windows server. I am not very good at ASP so I didn’t write the script in ASP or ASP .NET but one can convert this script in either ASP or ASP .NET, it should not be a huge problem I suppose.

Please make sure of the following before you configure the script:

• The user that is running the script must have execute permissions on cscript in system32
• The user that is running the script must have write permissions folder that is going to store the backup file.
• The user that is running the script must have execute permissions on mysqldump.exe in Mysqlbin
• If you running this script in browser then your web user will need the above permissions.

So here is the script:

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Ways to secure your MS SQL connection string in ASP .NET.

We have seen allot of people looking to have the best option to secure the connection string in their ASP .NET code to connect the MS SQL database since it contains the username and password of their database. It is very important to use a secure method for corporate clients and those who save Credit Card details in their MS SQL database. Or they will easily get hacked and all the important data will be exploited by the hacker. And also for those who store important data in MSSQL.

Here are the list of methods that can be used to secure your MS SQL connection string in your ASP.NET application.

METHODS:

1. Using a DSN connection string:

If you have the administrator users access to your Windows Server or use a control panel like Plesk then you can create a DSN with ODBC connector that stores the password of your database along with its name.

You will have to go to Start >> Administrative Tools >> Data Sources (ODBC) on your Windows Server with an account that has administrative privileges.

Or if you use a hosting control panel like Plesk that you can create the DSN from the control panel itself.

Once you have created the DNS you will have to mention it in your code as:

oConn.Open "DSN=mySystemDSN"

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