Build Your Own ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site Using C# & VB, Second Edition

Installing SQL Server 2005 Express Edition

After making sure IIS, the .NET Framework, and the SDK are installed correctly,

it’s time to move forward and install the next piece of software that you’ll be

using as we work through this book: SQL Server 2005 Express Edition.

SQL Server 2005 is Microsoft’s database solution for medium to large companies

and enterprises. SQL Server 2005 can be quite expensive, it generally requires

its own dedicated database server machine, and, at times, it necessitates that a

certified database administrator (DBA) be employed to ensure its maintenance;

yet it does offer a robust and scalable solution for larger web applications.

For the examples in this book, we’ll use SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, which

is free and sufficiently powerful for our needs. Unlike the expensive versions,

SQL Server 2005 Express Edition doesn’t ship with visual management utilities,

but you can use another free tool from Microsoft—SQL Server Management

Studio Express, which we’ll install next)—for these purposes.

You can install SQL Server 2005 Express Edition as follows:

1. Navigate to http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/sql/, and click the

Download Now link.

2. In the next page, you can choose between SQL Server 2005 Express Edition,

and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition with Advanced Services. The former

will be fine for our purposes. Your system should meet the necessary require-

ments, so go ahead and click Download.

3. Once the download has completed, double-click the downloaded executable

file, and follow the steps to install the product. It’s safe to use the default

options all the way through, though it is a rather long process.

Provided that everything goes well, SQL Server 2005 Express Edition will be up

and running at the end of the process. Like IIS, SQL Server runs as a service in

the background, accepting connections to databases instead of web pages. The

SQL Server is accessible at the address (local)\SqlExpress.

Installing SQL Server Management Studio Express

In order to use your SQL Server 2005 install effectively, you’ll need some sort

of administration tool that will allow you to work with your databases. SQL

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Chapter 1: Introducing ASP.NET and the .NET Platform

Server Management Studio Express is a free tool provided by Microsoft to allow

you to manage your installation of SQL Server 2005.

To install SQL Server Management Studio Express, follow these steps:

1. Navigate again to http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/sql/, and click

the Download Now link.

2.

This time, download the SQL Server Management Studio Express edition that

corresponds to the SQL Server 2005 version that you installed previously.

3. After the download completes, execute the file and follow the steps to install

the product.

Once it’s installed, SQL Server Manager Express can be accessed from Start > All

Programs > Microsoft SQL Server 2005 > SQL Server Management Studio Express.

When executed, it will first ask for your credentials, as Figure 1.12 illustrates.

Figure 1.12. Connecting to SQL Server

By default, when installed, SQL Server 2005 Express Edition will only accept

connections that use Windows Authentication, which means that you’ll use your

Windows user account to log in to the SQL Server. Because you’re the user that

installed SQL Server 2005, you’ll already have full privileges to the SQL Server.

Click Connect to connect to your SQL Server 2005 instance.

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Installing SQL Server Management Studio Express

Figure 1.13. Managing your database server

After you’re authenticated, you’ll be shown the interface in Figure 1.13, which

gives you many ways to interact with, and manage, your SQL Server 2005 in-

stance.

SQL Server Management Studio lets you browse through the objects inside your

SQL Server, and even modify their settings. For example, you can change the

security settings of your server by right-clicking the COMPUTER\SQLEXPRESS (where

COMPUTER is the name of your computer), choosing Properties, and selecting

Security from the panel, as shown in Figure 1.14.

SQL Server and Instances

You can run multiple SQL Servers on the one computer simultaneously—each

SQL Server is called an instance of SQL Server. How is this useful? Imagine

you have a production server that runs two applications with two separate

databases on the same instance of SQL Server. If, for some reason, we need

to restart SQL Server for the first application, the second application’s

database will become unavailable while the restart is taking place. If the

second application’s database was operating on a second instance of SQL

Server, we wouldn’t have such a problem—the second application would

continue working without missing a beat.

Each instance of SQL Server requires a name. The default instance name for

SQL Server 2005 Express Edition is SQLEXPRESS. When connecting to your

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Chapter 1: Introducing ASP.NET and the .NET Platform