[New Article] Connect a .NET Aspire microservice to an external database

[alistairmatthews]

Summary

Adds a new tutorial that illustrates how to work with an external database (i.e. those outside of .NET Aspire containers).

Partially addresses: #2336

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[davidfowl]

Not external, but existing.

[alistairmatthews]

Not external, but existing.

Thanks @davidfowl ~ all fixed.

[davidfowl]

Is the idea that someone reads this and understands it works for all databases? I think the risk with this is that it is SQL server specific and doesn't teach people the pattern. We need to address that.

[alistairmatthews]

Is the idea that someone reads this and understands it works for all databases? I think the risk with this is that it is SQL server specific and doesn't teach people the pattern. We need to address that.

Yes, that's right.

I've got the following note near the top. I could expand on it if you think it's not clear enough:

Tip

In this tutorial, you use EF Core with SQL Server. Other database integrations, including both those that use EF Core and others, can use the same approach to connect to an existing database.

Another approach would be to do a pivot for several different database integrations. That'll take longer though.

WDYT?