ASP.NET Universal Providers and Session State

Question

I'm developing an ASP.NET MVC 4 website and I'm using the Microsoft ASP.NET Universal Providers. I plan to deploy to Windows Azure and use SQL Database. In order to initialize memberships, profiles and roles on my local SQL Server 2008 database, I created a new user via the ASP.NET Web Site Administration Tool. How do I initialize sessions?

When my application runs, naturally I get a SqlException saying "Invalid object name dbo.Sessions." When testing on Windows Azure, this wasn't an issue; dbo.Sessions was created automatically. I'm able to run locally after generating a create table script from dbo.Sessions on Azure and applying it to my local SQL database.

web.config:

<membership hashAlgorithmType="SHA1" defaultProvider="DefaultMembershipProvider">
  <providers>
    <clear />
    <add name="DefaultMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultMembershipProvider" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="true" passwordFormat="Hashed" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false" requiresUniqueEmail="true" maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5" minRequiredPasswordLength="6" minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0" passwordAttemptWindow="10" applicationName="/" />
  </providers>
</membership>
<profile enabled="false" defaultProvider="DefaultProfileProvider">
  <providers>
    <clear />
    <add name="DefaultProfileProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultProfileProvider" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" applicationName="/" />
  </providers>
</profile>
<roleManager enabled="false" defaultProvider="DefaultRoleProvider">
  <providers>
    <clear />
    <add name="DefaultRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultRoleProvider" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" applicationName="/" />
  </providers>
</roleManager>
<sessionState mode="Custom" customProvider="DefaultSessionProvider">
  <providers>
    <add name="DefaultSessionProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultSessionStateProvider, System.Web.Providers" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" applicationName="/" />
  </providers>
</sessionState>

Jake1164 Jake1164 · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-14T17:05:40

This article goes into more detail of the differences between the old aspnet_Memembership vs the Universal Providers.

http://dotnet.dzone.com/articles/stronger-password-hashing-net

The key points from the article:

Firstly, there’s no more aspnet_regsql, you just make sure your connection string is set and the account has DBO rights (don’t worry, it doesn’t have to stay this way) then run the app up and attempt to perform any action which should cause the membership provider to hit the DB (i.e. log on – it doesn't matter that there isn't an account).

Thats it all there is to it, when it works.

ASP.NET Universal Providers and Session State

2 Answers