This question has been asked several times in the past with no satisfactory answer from Microsoft, so let's try again and see if they surprise us.
We have a Canvas PowerApp which uses an Azure SQL connection with AD Security - as per our own and Microsoft's best practice advice (i.e we're NOT using implicitly shared SQL-auth connections). We have the usual 3 environments, Dev, Test, Prod and we need to move the App between those environments. Very simple setup, as old as computing itself - one server per environment.
Note: *** The Power Automate Flows move fine because they use Connections References and Environment variables to point to the different server/database names.
However, the canvas app does NOT. As per this documentation link from MS, there is a troubling bullet point:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/data-platform/create-connection-reference
" * Canvas apps and flows handle connections differently. Flows use connection references for all connectors, whereas canvas apps only use them for implicitly shared (non-OAuth) connections, such as SQL Server Authentication."
A support ticket to MS and subsequent investigation by their engineer suggested there is no solution to this. We have over 35 connections in the app (all to views and tables in the same database). Are you seriously telling me that we have to delete/re-add each one every time we publish an update from Dev to Test etc????
So my question for Microsoft is: -- at your upcoming "Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event" on April 6, are you going to provide any joy for professionals using Canvas Apps/SQL server or are going to continue droning on about Model Driven/Dataverse nonsense and your mythical "low coders" (who always seem to turn to a grown-up to fix the mess once complexity/security/reality hits and their solution isn't viable anymore).
So, Charles Lamanna, Ryan Cunningham, Greg Lindhorst - any thoughts?
