Custom Navigation Provider (to be driven by an SPList)

Greetings - I was referred here by MSDN forums hope this is the right place -  

I have a custom control (:WebControl) that renders web.sitemap in a specific way. While it runs error free and produces the expected result, at Design-Time it complains

Error Creating Control - MyControl  The provider 'AspNetXmlSiteMapProvider' specified for the defaultProvider does not exist in the providers collection.

I have discovered that the error is cause by this line of code:

string div = string.Format("<div class='{0}' id='{1}'>{2}</div>", this.CssClass, this.ID.ToString(), EnumerateNodesRecursive(SiteMap.RootNode, level));

or more specifically, by the reference to SiteMap.RootNode - I am not clear what is missing thoough because I have configured the SiteMapProvider in web.config as this:

<siteMap>
      <providers>
        <clear/>
        <add name="AspNetXmlSiteMapProvider" 
             type="System.Web.XmlSiteMapProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" 
             siteMapFile="web.sitemap" 
             securityTrimmingEnabled="true"/>
      </providers>
    </s

Dan Griffin shows the extensibility of Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Testers by discussing the modification of the existing Test Interface Provider sample in the latest Visual Studio SDK and implements Fuzz Testing.

Dan Griffin

MSDN Magazine November 2007

Dino Esposito

MSDN Magazine November 2003

The System.Data.dll assembly in the .NET Framework contains namespaces whose base classes can be used to create custom data providers. These namespaces also define a number of data access interfaces and base classes that let developers create data providers that will interoperate with other custom providers. Using the ADO.NET classes Connection, Command, DataReader, and DataAdapter, writing a provider is easier than writing one for OLE DB. This article explains these classes and their implementation, and how they can be used to write a variety of different kinds of data providers.

Bob Beauchemin

MSDN Magazine December 2001

I wanted to expand the amount of information that is associated with each user(MembershipUser) in the ASPNETDB.MDF database file. Adding columns like FirstName, LastName, etc. So I began implementing my own custom Membership Provider. I created a derived MembershipUser class with the extra private variables that I wanted each MembershipUser record to store. Its basically done. Almost after I did this I stumbled across the columns in the ASPNETDB.MDF->aspnet_Profile table called "PropertyNames" and "PropertyValuesString".  Could I have simply used these two columns to accomplish what I was attempting to do or are these columns for global application configuration settings?  

Is the aspnet_Profile table purpose to store expanded/related information about users such as personal information? Or is it for something else? Thanks.

I created a custom membership provider in my ASP.NET 4.0 web site, stored  in App_Code, and referenced in my web.config.

However, it doesn't appear to be pulling values out of web.config during initialization.

The code was taken from http://www.asp.net/general/videos/how-do-i-create-a-custom-membership-provider, and the only modifications were changing "connectionStringName" here to the name of my connection string:

    Dim ConnectionStringSettings As ConnectionStringSettings = _
      ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings(config("connectionStringName"))

The connection string always comes back as nothing in this line:

    If ConnectionStringSettings Is Nothing OrElse ConnectionStringSettings.ConnectionString.Trim() = String.Empty Then
      Throw New ProviderException("Connection string cannot be blank.")
    End If

No matter what I change the password format to in web.config, the default value here is always used:

    Dim temp_format As String = config("passwordFormat")
    If temp_format Is Nothing Then
      temp_format = "Has