I'm currently developing my first load test ever, so please bear with me ~

The load test itself is running a set of unit tests that POST different requests to an HTTP Handler. Depending on which agent the load test is running on, the requests themselves are made against dev/staging environments, and then passed to a downstream service that 'handles' the request, and executes `INSERT` statements against a couple of databases. I wanted to build and include a simple plugin that implements `ILoadTestPlugin` and provides it's own set of instructions for the `LoadTestCompleted` event handler. This plugin is currently contained within a separate Class Library project that is included in the same solution that is housing the load test itself.

Before I get into describing the problem, I'd like to point out that I am currently running the load test locally against the same handler that I've set up in IIS.

I'm running into an issue when the event fires, and my method attempts to establish an entity connection to the target database context (currently using Entity Framework 4). [It appears](http://www.screencast.com/t/ge97yH5D34) that the plugin code is failing to find the app.config contained within the load test project. The exception message / stack trace points out that the connection string is invalid, but I have a hankering that the issue is that it cannot find it. On top of that, this same connection string is used throughout our code base in numerous places.

I can rule out the chance of my connection strings being invalid, because if I create a simple unit test method that uses the same configuration file to execute the same code, it works just fine. This is a given because the load test agent is contained in a different directory than that of the project, so it isn't having a problem locating the config file.

I've also tried adding the configuration file copied to the start-up project's output directory as a deployment item in my .testsettings file. No bueno. I've also created an app config file in the plug-in project that is an exact copy of that which I'm trying to use to see if that worked. Still no bueno.

Has anyone run into this problem? If you're trying to use `<connectionString>` sections in your config file, how can you get the load test plugin to find/use them?

I was going to attempt to use reflection and the good ole' `ConfigurationManager` to try and make a call into the assembly to find the path (and ultimately, the ProjectName.dll.config file), but wanted to ask the pros on StackOverflow for a little advice before moving forward.

Also, I'd provide code examples if this weren't such straight-forward EF code (or if it was getting past the point of: `var dbContext = new dbContext( myConnectionString );` )

Any help / feedback is much appreciated.