Persist Security Info Property=true and Persist Security Info Property=false

Question

For the properties:

Persist Security Info=true

and

Persist Security Info=false

Can you tell me what is the difference between them, and if I don't put it in my connection what will happen?

connect.ConnectionString = "Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;
                            Data Source=C:/Users/Nourah/Downloads 
                            /Phase3/Salary.accdb; 
                            Persist Security Info=False;";

Contrapuntist

possible duplicate of Differance Between Persist Security Info And Integrated Security – Zootechnics

but i don't understand carefully when i applied on code , same result – Contrapuntist

Not sure there is any point in using Persist Security Info with ms-access – Iphlgenia

Answer 1

Even if you set Persist Security Info=true OR Persist Security Info=false it won't show a difference up front. The difference is happening in the background.

When Persist Security Info=False, security-sensitive information, such as the password, is not returned as part of the connection if the connection is open or has ever been in an open state.

If you set Persist Security Info=True, Windows will remember the password specified in the connection string.

That's the difference.

MSDN Explanation

Setting Persist Security Info true or false will come into effect only if you mention username and password in the connection string. If you mention username and password in the connection string and set Persist Security Info as false then the credentials cannot be extracted, but if you set Persist Security Info as true while giving credentials in the connection string, windows will remember the credentials, and it can be extracted programmatically.

Formulism

so if i want set it to true how i will write the connection code ?? – Contrapuntist

@Contrapuntist setting it true or false will come into efffect only if you mention username and password in connection string..If you mention username and password in connectionstring and set this as false then the credentials cannot be extracted..but if you set to true while giving credentials in the connectionstring windows will remember the credentials and it can extracted in pgm...see edited answer – Formulism

"then the credentials cannot be extracted.." By what, the source code? What are pro's and con's and a simple scenario of when someone would need to set this to true? – Arabel

What does pgm mean? – Waldron

@sotn sorry i meant it as program – Formulism

@eaglei22, A user of .net entity framework's DbContext might want to extract the connection string in order to create additional connections for use in lower level operations such as SqlBulkCopy. – Shoat

@Chris Exactly this. You want to get the connection string from the EF DbContext to use for some non-EF DB operation like SqlBulkCopy or you want to get data from a raw SQL query without creating a POCO to read it into (as far as I know EF Core doesn't allow executing raw SQL into an object). I wonder though if using Persist Security Info = True poses a security risk and if making the connection string available via the options pattern would be safer. I don't see how it would but I'm not 100% sure. – Forworn

Answer 2

I found this answer here from Dan Guzman, SQL Server MVP:

I suggest you specify FALSE or omit the keyword entirely since it is the default, even during development. The only time you need to specify TRUE is if the application uses SQL authentication and subsequently retrieves the password from the connection object, which in my experience is rarely done or needed. Performance is not a concern.

Libya