SalesLogix .Net Extensions Connection Management

Through the SalesLogix .Net extensions a SLX Application wrapper is provided to the extension. Access into the core functionality is very possible including calling the GetNewConnection() method. I actually believe that this is a bad thing and see no reason why this is here. Some of my reasons;

1. This method call returns back an unmanaged ADO connection (not ado.net)
2. There is a property exposed that provides the actual connection string ISlxApplication.ConnectionString
3. Using the connectionstring paired with the OleDb database objects is the correct way to go in writing code that is in the .net extensions that needs database access
4. Is the right thing to do

 

My feeling is there is still a lot of developers out there that understand SalesLogix scripting very well but not .Net and how to write well partitioned code.

So in a nut shell …  in your code do the following;

private string _connectionString;

    void IRunnable.Initialize(ISlxApplication SlxApplication, ILicenseKeyManager LicenseKeyManager)
    {
        _connectionString = SlxApplication.ConnectionString;
    }

    object IRunnable.Run(object[] Args)
    {
        using (OleDbConnection conn = new OleDbConnection(_connectionString))
        {
            conn.Open();

            using (OleDbCommand command = conn.CreateCommand())
            {
                command.CommandText = “Select count(*) from Account”;
                int count = (int)command.ExecuteScalar();
            }

        }
    }

– Mark