SqlServerConnection should use a more robust way of cloning the connection

Currently in SqlServerConnection.CreateMasterConnection() we just create a new connection with a modified connection string in order to get a connection to the master database. But we know that SqlConnection.Open() will by default strip out the password from the connection string so by the time we get the connection string it might have already been mangled.

There is also SqlCredentials which was added in recent versions of SqlClient as an alternative to having credentials embedded in the connection string.

Incidentally ((ICloneable)sqlConnection).Clone() can handle all of this, but the functionality isn’t available in CoreCLR.

[jnm2]

That helps, thank you!

[ajcvickers]

@jnm2 A couple of things. First, SecureString is not recommended anymore: see https://github.com/dotnet/platform-compat/blob/master/docs/DE0001.md

Second, I suspect that the best approach here is to not use EF to create the database instance. Connecting to master is one of those fragile things that can easily be broken by different SQL and client permissions and settings. Instead, I would recommend creating an empty database instance using a connection to master that you create appropriately. MigrateAsync is designed to treat such as database as new and run all the rest of the schema creation for you. EF doesn’t need to create to master for that.

So:

• Create the empty database
• Then call Migrate on it

(Also, your scenario is just about the only situation where I approve of running Migrate in code. 😉)