I did manage to successfully install dotnetnuke 5.0.0. on a windows vista box having moved from version 4.9.
After installation I added the extra database connection string by insert the line indicated in red on my web config

<connectionStrings>
   <add name="SiteSqlServer" connectionString="Data Source=CorpSQLServer;Initial Catalog=CorpPortalDb;User ID=myUSerId;Password=myPasswd" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
   <add name="HumanResourceSqlServer" connectionString="Data Source=CorpSQLServer;Initial Catalog=HumanResourceDb;User ID=myUSerId;Password=myPasswd" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
</connectionStrings>
  .
  .
  .
  .
<data defaultProvider="SqlDataProvider">
      <providers>
        <clear />
        <add name="SqlDataProvider" type="DotNetNuke.Data.SqlDataProvider, DotNetNuke.SqlDataProvider" connectionStringName="SiteSqlServer" upgradeConnectionString="" providerPath="~\Providers\DataProviders\SqlDataProvider\" objectQualifier="CORP_" databaseOwner="dbo" />
       <add name="SqlHumanResourceProvider" type="DotNetNuke.Data.SqlDataProvider, DotNetNuke.SqlDataProvider" connectionStringName="HumanResourceSqlServer" upgradeConnectionString="" providerPath="~\Providers\DataProviders\SqlDataProvider\" objectQualifier="" databaseOwner="dbo" />
      </providers>
</data>

Upon adding of the extra lines and visiting the dnn portal, it either
Launch the dotnetnuke installer page as if its prompting the re-installation of the dotnetnuke.
It fails to launch the portal all together indicating a 'page cannot be found' message on IE browser.

Am sure its those lines that are causing this behaviour since when I remove (the second line under data), the portal work fines.

How do I fix this issue? I need this since I have custom modules I implemented whose database are different from the core dnn database 'CorpPortalDb'.

Please note that the above configuration worked well with the dnn version 4.x

The're reason why I want to maintain the above (see my post above).

• The dnn visual studio 2005 c# project template that I use to create custom modules assumes the database configuration format set in web config (as indicated in my post) hence it will give me extra work of having to access the database directly using other methods.
• All the customs module (which are working well with dnn 4.x) that I have implemented make use of the database configuration format (as indicated in my post) and am avoiding having to re-engineer those modules agains - there are many.
• I find this to be a clean way of defining my connection configuration and hence connecting to the database and I dont feel like dropping it unless dnn 5.0 has decided to drop this method..

Do you think dnn 5.0.0 has dropped this approach of connection to an alternate database altogether or is it just another bug? Please assist

I am having the same problem as the original poster and mine worked correctly in DNN4 as well. I also agree with him that the DNN Provider is a more elegant way of obtaining the data connectivity than to have to go back and redo all of the code to obtain connectivity and get the data using none core functionality. Why is it possible to define a data provider other than default by saying...

Dim objProvider As Provider = CType(_providerConfiguration.Providers("my_provider"), Provider)

if there was no intention of there being a way of using an alternative provider nor is there any reason for the "Default" data provider setting in web.config if there is only ever going to be one option.

Surely this was core functionality in DNN4 that is lost if it doesn't work on purpose in DNN5. I also cannot believe that this doesn't break many, many custom development solutions like mine since there was no documentation that said it shouldn't work in DNN4 (and hence don't use it). I am just hoping that it is still there but for some reason the syntax has changed but it is a slim hope.