Unless I’ve missed something, the only way you can specify a shared settings file to an application is through the connection wizard at run time. It would be helpful if you could do this in AppMain. That way there would be no need for a user to run Connection Wizard to set a data source when the app is initially run. Right now the only way avoid prompting the user is to place the connection string in AppMain which then requires re-deployment of the app if it changes.  

I like the idea of the shared settings file since it provides a simple method to re-direct users to another database server. In our environment we maintain a backup SQL server at another site and having the shared setting file would make it easy to re-direct users to the backup sever. At the same time I’d like to be able to deploy the app to users without requiring them to run Connection Wizard

-Larry