I am going to take back my last statement I think if you are wanting to do this then a simple update to the sqldataprovider in the dataproviders folder could do it

If you look at SQLDataProvider.vb in \DotNetNuke_4.3.7_Source\Library\Providers\DataProviders\SqlDataProvider

You could add a property for a definable connection string then create another ExecuteReader Function?  How do you do that so they can have multiple overrides - or make that one have a flag to use your defined connection string - something like that -

So It might look like this

 Public Overrides Function ExecuteScalar(ByVal ProcedureName As String, ByVal ParamArray commandParameters() As Object,Optional ByVal ConnectionFlag=False) As Object

If ConnectionFlag then
            Return SqlHelper.ExecuteScalar(UserInputConnectionString, DatabaseOwner & ObjectQualifier & ProcedureName, commandParameters)

'UserInputConnectionstring i defined in the properties as a normal read/write porperty

Else

               Return SqlHelper.ExecuteScalar(ConnectionString, DatabaseOwner & ObjectQualifier & ProcedureName, commandParameters)

End If
        End Function

Currently, I don't have access to the current source, but it looks like if we can change the Instance() method to allow a parameter in, it can be switched to the new datasource. Can anyone come up with an example of how best to do this?

I'm suprised this hasn't come up yet. I think it would be a common practice to have your module store/retrieve data outside of the dotnetnuke database. Should we log this in gemini?

Anyways, for those who don't know, this is how you would modify the web.config file

Thanks for the input hooligannes! I'm not familiar with this process, could you provide an example?

Thanks