Installing SQL Server
Getting software installed and running can be painful at the best of times. I don't want you to have to spend a long time installing a database product. Also, I want to use a professional product (rather than one of the handy in-memory databases), so for this article I've opted to use SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. You can use the 2008 edition, if you likethe examples in this article should all work on that platform as well.
To get the ball rolling, download and install the following three items from the Microsoft website:
- Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
- Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express
- Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Express Edition
When installing SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, accept the default settings; this will automatically create a single instance of the database engine on which you can host the sample database we'll be using.
For SQL Server Management Studio Express, no special configuration is requiredagain, just accept the defaults. Once this product is installed, it should automatically detect the instance created by SQL Server 2005 Express Edition.
Our code examples will be built and tested using Visual C# 2008 Express Edition.
This all sounds very complicated, but it really isn't! Let's get these new tools up and running.