What does App=EntityFramework do in Sql connection string?

dotnetnoob picture dotnetnoob · Mar 20, 2013 · Viewed 11.6k times · Source

I have 2 connection strings - 1 local and 1 for my main production server. Entity Framework added App=EntityFramework to my local string when I installed it (4.1) - I'm now on 4.3. What does this do - I can't find any reference to it?

Here's my local connection string:

<add name="LocalConnection"
      providerName="System.Data.EntityClient"
      connectionString="metadata=
      res://*/;
      provider=System.Data.SqlClient;
      provider connection string='
      Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;
      AttachDBFilename=C:\mypath\MyDb.mdf;
      Integrated Security=True;
      User Instance=True;
      MultipleActiveResultSets=True;
      App=EntityFramework'" />

Just curious!

Answer

d512 picture d512 · Aug 13, 2014

App and Application Name are simply a way for somebody debugging SQL Server to know which client is connecting to it. If you had a SQL Server that has several apps that used it, it might be hard to know which one was sending which statements. If each app used a different Application Name it would be very clear.

Check this out for more info.