Hi all,

I have recently moved from graphic design to IT Development - something I have been wanting to do for years. However, I am finding supposedly "easy" taks kinda tricky...

I want to start playing with ASP.NET at home, so I have installed VS2008 Express (Web Developer) and SQL2005 Express. I want to use the Northwind DB to play a bit...

When I open SQL2005, there are no servers to connect, so I asume I need to create a local server for me to deploy a Database. The question is: how? I already installed IIS, and created a local directory... If someone could enlighten me, I'd be grateful :)

Best regards from North Devon,
David

Being somewhat of a noob myself I hope this is right!

With the express version of SQL2005 there isnt a database engine to connect to.  What I think you need is a developer copy of SQL server 2005.  You can, on last look, buy this for about £40 from most software sellers and this allows you to have a full install (inc. Engine) but only licences it for 'Development Purposes', so no commercial use is allowed.  This will then give you the front end 'login' screen that you are expecting.

I beleive the point of SQL2005 express is to allow people to bundle a DB into a peice of software where the end user probably won't have an RDBMS to use.

Hope this helps!

RNDnick.

Hi

If the SQL 2005 Express is installed you do have the database engine, but generally no tools to connect to it. The database engine is usually installed with instance name of SQLEXPRESS. So when you connect use \ syntax for the connection string or server name in the wizard.

Example for connecting to a local SQL express with trusted connection is

Server=(local)\SQLEXPRESS;Database=AdventureWorks;Integrated Security=sspi;

To check if SQLEXPRESS is running open up computer management and have a look at the services. You should see an entry for SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS) in the list.

I would advise you to purchase the dev edition as it will give you the extra tools you may need. VS studio is very limited on what you can do, and you need to know a lot TSQL commands to do standard tasks like create a database and add some table.

I hope this helps.

Regards

Richard...