Well, the most obvious thing to me is that you are trying to make a call to a database through a BO before you have ever set the connection string. I will scan through all of the code that you posted, but this is a red flag:
//-- ToDo: Configure the security settings
//--------------------------------------------
//-- Retrieve the global preferences
try
{
SFSPreferencesBO.RetrieveSecurityPreferences();
}
catch
{
if (ConnectionManager.ShowAvailableConnectionStrings())
{
// Set the connections
ConnectionManager.SetConnections();
SFSPreferencesBO.RetrieveSecurityPreferences();
}
}
In this code, you are placing a try/catch around attempting to retrieve the security preferences. If you don't have your connection string set by this point, a try catch in this scenario isn't going to help and you are just going to make the end-user wait for a while as it times out.
I think that you are making this diagnosis far harder than it needs to be. Go back to your program.cs and open the SetDataSources method. Instead of calling SetConnections, manually specify the connection string just as you try and diagnose what is going on here. This way you are not relying on the ConnectionStringWizard, but have hard coded the connection string.
MicroFour.StrataFrame.Data.DataBasics.DataSources.Add(new SqlDataSourceItem(string.Empty,"MyHardCodedConnectionString"));
If you aren't familiar with connection strings, here is a sample that specifies the password:
MicroFour.StrataFrame.Data.DataBasics.DataSources.Add(new SqlDataSourceItem(string.Empty,"server=MySqlServer;user=sa;password=MyPass;database=MyDatabase;"))
Here is a connection string that uses Windows authentication:
MicroFour.StrataFrame.Data.DataBasics.DataSources.Add(new SqlDataSourceItem(string.Empty,"server=MySqlServer;integrated security=SSPI;database=MyDatabase;"))
After you do this and get it working, then clear our the connections.dat again. Then put back in the code that has the SetConnections();. After this, if you still are not working, then turn on the debugging on the connection. This will output an HTML file giving you all of the queries taking place and this will 100% clue you in.
MicroFour.StrataFrame.Data.DataBasics.DataSources[string.Empty].SetDebugOn(@"c:\output.html", true, true);
In the above code snippet, I like adding that last "true" as it will show a message reminding you that you have debug mode on. It really stinks when you leave this on in a run-time environment by accident.
And finally, as you have learned the hard way, I never recommend installing a trial version of anything in a production environment because it seems to expire and have issues causing down-time. I too have learned this the hard way.
