I am trying to create a module that will access a different database then the core DNN database. 

I added the connection string to the web.config.  I put the following code in the sqldataprovider.vb for the module I created

_connectionString = Config.GetConnectionString("StarkConnectionString")

Also, if the database that I am trying to connect to is a SQL database, then do I need to declare a separate data provder or would the default dataprovider be the correct provider.

Thanks Judith

'Get Connection string from web.config

Save yourself and your module users a lifetime of misery by not putting anything into web.config.  Use module settings instead to store your values.  That way each instance of your module can connect to any database and can be changed at anytime without impact to the rest of your DNN installation.

Using module settings is a nice idea. Look for the settings.ascx web control that was created along with your other controls (assuming you used the dnn template to create your module). There wont be any specific settings already there, you'll need to write the code yourself. I'm new to this myself but I imagine it'll just involve adding a couple of text boxes for the provider info and connection string to the settings control then changing sqldataprovider.vb so that it looks at the module settings instead of the default provider.