Question

I have an application, with SQL Server Express Database.

I made an instance of SQL Server Express and connected it with a basic report for testing.

On the development server, it works ok.

Then I shared the folder and then ran the application from some other network computer (LAN)
It gave error that it could not find the server.

1. Could you advise what could be the problem.
2. Also when this application is installed on another computer, how does my dataconnection adjust itself. The current dataconnection is based in the server instance of SQL Server installed on my development computer.
3. How does my application automatically create new server instance on any of client’s computer and connects to it? Like Inflow creates InflowSQL instance wherever it is installed.

Answer 1

You need to ensure a couple of things:

1. The SQL Server Browser service is started (by default, SQL Server Express is a named instaned)
2. The protocol TCP/IP is enabled (by default, it is disabled)

You can do this all through the SQL Server Configuration Manager (run “sqlservermanager10.msc” if you’re using SQL Server 2008 [R2 optional]).