Friday, October 3, 2008

SQL Server 2008 Express: An Oxymoron

I just installed SQL Server 2008 Express on my new laptop. Being a brand-new Vista machine with the latest updates (including Framework 3.5), I imagined it would be a breeze. But it turned out to be much more complicated, making me fear the potential complications of deploying a setup package that includes SQL 2008 Express.

Here’s what you have to do before you can even start:
And then you have to pay attention when running the SQL 2008 Express installer, because if you blindly just click “Next”, you’ll wind up with a dysfunctional installation.

Of course, I appreciate that SQL 2008 Express has lots of good features—and the product is free, too. I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong. But what ever happened to “Express”? Installing SQL Express 2008 takes the best part of an hour!

Tell me your thoughts: do you plan to deploy Express 2008 in setup packages, or perhaps use SQL Server Compact instead?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Microsoft just needs competition :)
Never tried SQLite myself but you don't have to waste hours extracting some DLLs :)

System.Data.SQLite
http://sqlite.phxsoftware.com

Anonymous said...

If you can afford it or your company pays for it, I would recommend installing the SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition, creating both the default instance and a separate named instance called sqlexpress (to accomodate all the examples on the internet that connect to ".\sqlexpress").

Joe Albahari said...

Yes - good call. You need developer edition for the full tools (e.g., Profiler) and you need express edition to support user instances.

The gotcha is that you've got to install developer edition *before* installing sql express - otherwise you won't be able to install the full client tools!